The Other Half is a biweekly
relationships column that delves inside the male mind.
Sometimes, you meet a guy and everything just clicks. His jokes make you laugh so hard you cry; he challenges your intellect with dazzling witticisms; both of you have the same taste in music.
You want to see him again, but do you ask him out right then or wait a couple days? With men, you have to play it cool - appearing needy at the beginning is only going to kill your chances. Maybe you wait for him to call? No, you're over-thinking it.
You know he likes James Bond, but is a movie too intimate a setting for a first time out? Maybe the golf course would be better. Oh, the dilemmas of man dating.
The bromantic minefield is mined for all its worth once again in this week's release of the film I Love You, Man. In it, Paul Rudd plays a sensitive male, engaged to be married, who realizes he's been an exclusive "girlfriend guy" for so long he has no one suitable to be his best man. This leads him to go on a series of dates with men, suffering awkward pitfalls along the way.
The film is pop culture's latest bromantic comedy offering, following in the footsteps of Judd Apatow's Superbad - in which two male teens tell each other "I love you" - and MTV's Bromance, a bro-dating elimination reality series.
Given the similar taboos the film depicts, I'm sure I Love You, Man will be funny. But in any case, I'd go to see anything with Paul Rudd in it. I love that guy. If I saw him on the street, I'd run up to him and ask him for a hug. Does that make me sound gay?
Certainly, our culture's latent homophobia and the fear straight men have of appearing gay are what drives many of the rules around male-friend courtship etiquette, but there may be some other reasons for it too.
"Men are socialized to chase women and to not get that upset if they are rejected by women," says Geoffrey Greif, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and author of Buddy System: Understanding Male Friendships. "But we are not socialized to pursue men."
Dr. Greif says men are raised to look at other men primarily as competition, and as a result we don't put ourselves out there in a personal way to each other. Without much awareness of why we're doing it, we make the man-date initiation about something else, like a hockey game, so as not to risk brojection. If the other guy says he doesn't want to go, it's simply because he doesn't like hockey. And then you never call him again.
Then there's the historical sociological angle. Peter Nardi, a professor at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif., who studies male friendships, says previous generations' gender work divide may have bred men to be emotionally reserved with each other.
"What happened was that men found themselves in work situations where they had to be more instrumental, and women found themselves in situations where they were more expressive, such as nursing and teaching. So for men, their relationships follow a more instrumental, activity-oriented interaction, whereas women's interaction is much more emotionally expressive."
Dr. Nardi says, though, that since he edited a book called Men's Friendships 17 years ago, things have changed. "I think it's the result of the baby boomer generation breaking down gender differences in the sixties."
I know exactly what he means - I've seen it first hand. My once long-haired hippie father, who raised me on hugs, frequent expressions of emotion, and muesli, was part of the generation that experimented with the idea that masculinity could embrace qualities previously thought of as only feminine - you know, really sophisticated things like using your hands and arms to express tenderness, or putting a feeling into words.
While I do believe the changes have benefited my generation, I still can't help regretting, even as I'm doing it myself, the light being shone on the inner workings of male friendships.
Often, what makes a brolationship so great is its unspoken nature. The taboo around discussing the nitty gritty of every feeling means you get to spend some time in the den of subtext, which can be a very relaxing place to hang. Sometimes you just want to watch a game, drink beer and express love only through a mutual admiration for a guy on skates' skills.
In the end, I Love You, Man is probably not a great man-date flick (not that I was asking you out on one). My friend Kate tipped me off that it might actually be just a good regular-date flick. Bromance films, she suggests, "are about mainstreaming homosexual mores. Like, the gayer you are, the more manly you are. Maybe men have just figured out that women love men who can communicate and show love."
There is, however, some intimation in the trailer to I Love You, Man that the fiancée in the film gets suspicious about the time her man is spending with the guy who becomes his new brofriend.
Women have nothing to fear from the bromance, of course, but a little jealousy might at least confirm that male friendships matter. Plus, when you think about it, the only difference between a Brokeback Mountain bromance and a platonic one is that on the latter bromantic getaway, the guy comes back with some fish.
Micah Toub's memoir, Growing Up Jung: Coming of Age as the Son of Two Shrinks, will be published in April, 2010.