The part about remote work removing a driving force for friendships hit me pretty hard. In February of 2020, I had a dozen or so really close friends that I would see every day. We would laugh together, get food together, and work on hard problems together.

In March of 2020, we all started working remotely and I haven't seen any of them since. Even if I wanted to, almost all of them have moved to other cities, states, or countries. Most left the company we were at (including me). We have a Discord server where we all still talk and chat, but it's a cheap imitation of what we used to have.

Now, I work with a team of people who are completely scattered geographically. Maybe once every few months I will see one of them in person if they happen to be in the area. They feel like strictly co-workers- I don't think we've ever really laughed or just goofed around that much, and certainly aren't hanging out outside of work hours. I wouldn't be able to call one of them up in a time of crisis and ask for help.

I miss my friends, and the simple solution would be "go find new ones!" but, like this essay points out, that's not exactly easy and there's a "blind spot" about how hard it can be. There's also still a pandemic going on- I haven't caught COVID-19 yet and don't plan on it. Any sort of friendship that would involve physically being near other people on a regular basis is just asking for it. To me, getting sick is not worth having a friend, even though it is wrecking my mental health. I know that equation is different for other people.

We need “work/life” balance because, at some point, we started separating work from life. It didn’t use to be that way. And we should begin to change it again.

Building companies with friends is the best way I have found to bring these two sides of life together.

And what about those people who say don’t start a company with friends or family? F* them! Sure, friendships might suffer. But hey, so what. That’s life.

And at least you’re surrounded by friends who love you, and you love them. Instead of random assholes who just wanna progress their career.

I came to study in Turkey in 1999. Until about 2003 or so it was still very common to see male friends holding hands. It became very uncommon towards mid-naughts.

The recent award winning Belgian film "Close" is in part about the awkwardness of (young) male friendship in western cultures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqPaPT6E_1k

It is still very common in many parts of India, or even in Indian quarters in places like Singapore, to see young male Indians hold hands.

I didn't find it odd at all. I actually thought, what a pity that in western societies this behavior can be seen as odd.

Hand holding is (or was) acceptable by boys in Korea; and so was non-sexual physical touching, even well into the college age by young men.

So it was a shock when I first befriended some Koreans in the US on student visas back in the 1980s.

That angl-saxon coldness was a learning experience for both parties. Being raised in the US by an emotionally distant Korean mother (Asperger’s?) I just thought that the US standard was normal.

It’s funny as a gay man to see all of these pictures because they really do read to me as gay with my modern lens. That isn’t because of some sort of special gaydar it’s just so uncommon to see straight men showing any type of vulnerability or affection with each other. I have a friend who’s been playing soccer with the same team for 10 years and he came to me saying he realize that he didn’t know anything about their personal lives.

I agree about pretty much every part of this article though. I feel bad for straight guys, how do y’all get by in life with such a lack of intimacy (physical and emotional) with your close friends?

P

I'm a guy and have been focused on building tools to explore emotions for like 10 years. I think a lot of us men lack intimacy with close friends, especially emotional, because we lack it with ourselves.

The analogy that came to mind this morning is that of a swimming pool. If intimacy is the depth of water, many of us are afraid to go into the deep end. We want to feel the narrow slice of what we've learned is ok to feel, aka stay in the shallow end of the pool because it's safe. Maybe in the past we went into the deep end (often falling in love and then it ending) and we almost drowned, and therefore we may be terrified to go back there, even if we are a much better swimmer that we think we are.

Also, I don't think this applies just to men, as I was crafting this analogy today as a result of a woman who wants to seem to avoid going too deep with me or other people in her life right now, whereas I want the depth.

I'm a man. I don't even like showing tremendous physical intimacy with the women I go out with on dates. I hate it when people at my workplace or church touch me. My brain says "Get away from me, all of you".

I think that hard times is what really creates that sense of brotherhood. Unfortunately, in the modern western world, it has become really easy to avoid serious hardships once you get even to a modest level of income. I've wanted to do challenging things with acquaintances of mine, but they just don't pan out. I invite people to the gym, I invite them on long hikes, I ask them to do something challenging with me, but it's so easy go to just stay at home and order Doordash. Once you get older a lot of people have other responsibilities and making new best friend just drops down the lost of priorities. I've just gotten used to it. I try to find satisfaction in life through what I can directly do, and not what others can do for me (or with me).

I'm a pretty affectionate (straight) dude, but I also came from a pretty affectionate family (German culture, parents were U.S. immigrants), and in particular between my father and I (I kiss him on the cheek goodbye for example). I hug everyone hello and goodbye, it feels nice. There's no fear of gayness, heck I have a couple gay friends I hug but they know my orientation so it's fine lol.

Looking at these photos, it does seem more close than I'd be comfortable with, especially the intertwined-leg photos, that seems a step beyond "mere" hand-holding lol. Or maybe it's not? Eye of the beholder I guess!

> it’s just so uncommon to see straight men showing any type of vulnerability or affection with each other.

In Angloamerican countries, maybe. What you call 'vulnerability and affection' is a requirement for social conduct in Mediterranean, especially Latin countries. You wont find people who behave distant like in the US, or gasp cold like in the Nordic countries. They would be either foreigners, who would be identified as such and their behavior of being cold would be considered normal because they are foreigners, or, if they look local enough, they would be thought to have psychological problems, even autistic. In Spain, there is even a proverb that goes like 'being cold like a Swede'.

And in some places, if you arent emotional and crying in important moments as a man or a woman, people could easily think that you are psychopath.

Not exaggerating or kidding. There are great differences in between cultures on the planet.

I have 4 kids and a full time job. There are not enough hours in the day to even come close to doing 'well' at either of these responsibilities. Time to build and maintain friendships would be a luxury for me. I get by with the knowledge that if I didn't keep doing what I'm doing, the people I'm responsible for would all be homeless or worse.

I hug my friends (I’m fairly straight) but yeah the whole classically masculine vibe makes me pretty uncomfortable

This is pretty simple. Back when being a sexual deviant was heavily stigmatized, there was an overwhelming presumption that any public male-male affection was platonic. Thus these images wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in the time they were taken. Now that we live in an age where any perversion that doesn't involve children is acceptable, normal men are much less comfortable acting like, well, normal men. It's too bad. Even when I was younger, which wasn't all that long ago, it was normal for two boys to hold hands in friendship.

Even going to a pub with a friend and I get strange looks. 2 straight guys having some beers. I guess gayness ruined the rainbow for everybody else.