this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Are male friendships considered not normal??
It... depends. Not as normalized as they should be, and a lot less emotional support than you'd expect.
It also depends on which circles you run in. Some of my friends I will see at least once a month and we talk about each other's problems from time to time. A big factor is whether you're in shared hobbies and whether those hobbies push people to grow and improve
There is nothing non-normalized about male friendships. "Normalizing" means you are making something which has a social stigma not have that social stigma. There is no social stigma against men having friends.
Like I said, depends on the friendship and the environment. If two friends get too close, they may be called faggots, or get jokes about them being gay for each other (meant to be deeply insulting because homophobia, yay). Maybe it's just the fact that I live in the southeast US. I don't know whether you're a man or not, also just my personal experience.
It doesn't. There is literally no where in the world where there is a stigma against men having male friends.
I used to think that is absurd too. Then i got older and a lot of my frieds got married or in serious relationships and then most of them disappeared. My thought was always that they just found new friends or whatever, in reality they just don't have time besides relationships and children and work.
My best friend from 10+ years ago just came over, i haven't seen him in 3 years or so. He kept telling me that we always have such a good time and he wants to come over more and drink coffee and talk. All while looking at his watch saying things like: ooof i gotta go soon, my girlfriend is gonna be pissed. When he left he said: we should do that soon, he can't wait. The same thing he said 3 years ago. We used to live together and go on vacation together. We pretty much shared the same interests. It happens super fast.
But, none of this points to male friendships being considered abnormal, which is what a call for normalization means to me.
Male friendships are less common than they used to be, at least anecdotally, but they're still socially acceptable, AKA "normal".
Normalization means that to you because that's what normalization means.
There really isn't. It's just a growing subset that sees any long term friendship as a homosexual relationship. This usually stems.from the "way too queer but not gay enough" crowd.