Tag Archives: Friendship

Male Physical Intimacy

In their continuing efforts to destroy itself, Cracked has an article up on being in the closet while in other countries. It’s a low effort post consisting of 5 “facts” that are mostly blindingly obvious (Some geographic spaces have people more accepting of homosexuality than people from other geographic spaces! Surprising!) and a complete absence of humour. But there was one thing in it I wanted to comment on (aside from it being just another note on Cracked’s continued decline).

In Botswana, it’s customary for men to hold hands while chatting and walking. (No, the irony of such a homophobic country being filled with men skipping down the street holding hands was not lost on me.)

This is not irony. It is in fact the definitional opposite of irony, it is exactly what you’d expect.

These men are friends, engaging in male bonding. Touch is and always has been and important part of bonding and there is absolutely nothing implicitly homoerotic about men engaging in physical male bonding. In past, intimate physical contact between men was normal, and in other parts of the world that have not been homoeroticized it still is.

Take a look at this picture (one of a hundred similar ones from Art of Manliness):

Are these guys gay? Probably not. Yet it probably looks gay to you. In a healthy culture, intimate physical contact between men is normal and healthy. There would be nothing untoward or sexual about this, it’s just some friends hanging out. In our homoeroticized culture, this  kind of intimate contact between males is gay. We can see this difference from the Cracked article:

I didn’t even have to hide my boyfriend, whom I met at the gay underground party. He came to visit me for a weekend in my tiny village, and no one seemed to notice or suspect anything unusual about two dudes quietly holing up in a house together and sweating a lot. They must be great friends who love to work out!

As was pointed out in the Way of Men, men want to be recognized as masculine, as men within their gang who have attained the masculine virtues. Gays are effeminate, not masculine, and exist outside the gang. Normal men don’t want to be seen as effeminate or gay as this represents a failure to attain manhood and puts one outside of the gang.

In a “homophobic” society were homosexuality is proscribed, men can be physically and emotionally intimate with each other without being gay, because this intimacy is simply a normal, close friendship. So King David can say of his best friend:

“Jonathan lies slain on your high places.
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;
very pleasant have you been to me;
your love to me was extraordinary,
surpassing the love of women.

And it’s not gay, because it isn’t gay. A man can have and signal intimacy with other men without it signalling gayness, because homosexuality doesn’t exist outside the occasional condemnation in a religious sermon. Male intimacy is normalized.

But, in a society where homosexuality is normalized as an accepted alternative lifestyle, and homosexuals publicly display their sexual proclivities through displays of intimacy, you can no longer safely display intimacy. If you do, there is a significant chance that other men around you will think you are signalling gayness, you will lose your masculinity. Through this, homoeroticism colonizes male intimacy. When homosexuality becomes normalized, male intimacy becomes denormalized.

In a gay society, you can not be homosocially intimate without being gay.

There are some modern attempts to bring non-sexual male intimacy back into normalcy. Both bromance and no homo try to explicitly counter-signal hetorosexuality and masculinity while engaging in male intimacy. But even then, our society is so gay that bromance is seen as “an increasing openness of society in the twenty-first century to reconsider gender, sexuality, and exclusivity constraints” rather than an attempt by young men to close the gaping spiritual and emotional wound that the lack of intimate male friendship has left in their hearts. These attempts have mostly failed.

In a non-gay society, you could slap your friend on the ass after the game, and walk to the showers with your arms around him. In our gay society, this sounds gay to you (and to me) because male intimacy has been colonized by homosexuality. This is one vague, virtually invisible, unquantifiable harm the homosexual movement has done to the majority.

Sharing Interests

Wintery Knight posted something from William Lane Craig along with his own advice. I’d suggest reading it, most of the advice given is good common-sense, but I do wonder about this:

I strongly urge those of you who are single to make having a shared interest in your field of study and ministry a top criterion in selecting a spouse. It doesn’t matter how beautiful she is or what a great cook she is if she has no interest in your field of study and so sees talking about things that you are passionate about as an annoyance.

Shared interests in marriage has always been one of those things that people seem to value highly that I don’t understand. I don’t see a need for a wife to share your interests, whatever they may be. I do understand that one or two shared activities, something like dancing, that you can do together on date nights is probably beneficial, but for something like philosophy: what use would there be in discussing philosophy with your wife? Why would that be even remotely necessary?

As you can probably tell by the hundreds of thousands of words I’ve written on my blog and the thousands of articles I’ve linked to in my Lightning Rounds, I have a strong interest in socio-political theory and have a moderate interest in philosophy, theology, economics, history, etc., but I would never expect my wife to have to have an interest in this or for her to become my regular politics discussion partner.

That’s what I have friends for.

Would it be nice to have a wife who liked socio-political theory? Sure. It would also be nice to have a wife who liked ultimate, board games, science fiction, video games, and anime (as for shooting, hunting, and martial arts, see here) but these can be nice little bonuses. These are not things a wife is needed for and I don’t see the point in making them requirements.

I think this shared interests thing comes from the modern phenomenon of making your wife your friend. A century ago, most men would have thought the idea of discussing politics, theology, or philosophy with your wife was absurd; those discussions were what you did with your friends at the pub. Your wife was the one who dragged you home when you were too sloshed too distinguish between monarchy and anarchy.

But the pubs are now co-ed, men’s clubs have been destroyed, and male friendship has been destroyed. Men no longer have easy ways to find someone to trade bullshit about politics and philosophy with.

At some point in the last century, male friendship began to die, so well-meaning people looking to fill the bleeding wound in their chest its absence caused confused the categories of wife and friend. A husband-wife relationship is not a friendship, it is a unique form of companionship centred around the creation and care of a home and family. Neither relationship is better, they are simply different.

A wife can not be your lover, your friend, your confidante, your parenting-partner, your home-building partner, your BS-ing partner, your debate opponent, your drinking buddy, your complaint outlet, and your dance partner all at once. That is simply too much load to put onto a single relationship. A man needs male friends to fulfill many of these needs.

I’m pretty sure that expecting too much from a single partner is one of the great contributors to the breakdown of modern marriage.

Build a home with your wife and make her your lover, save philosophical diatribes for your friends.

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Another, difference with WK I want to comment comes from this:

And it also allows you to lead a woman so that she can develop herself to be ready for marriage to you. I hope that she would already have done a lot of the work by herself, (chastity, STEM degree, debt-free, good job, apologetics, conservative politics), before she even meets you.

Earlier WK writes about the male’s role as provider, but here he he puts down a STEM degree and a good job as developing herself for marriage, but if the man is meant to be the provider of what use are the degree and the job in a potential wife? Is a career-oriented women the kind of woman at traditional Christian wants raising his children? I think there’s too much focus on what a women studies and works at in the Christian community.

That being said, a degree is a basic signalling mechanism of low time-preference, so if dating any woman without a degree, ensure it’s not because she has high time preference and verify a low time preference in another way. But other than signalling why does it particularly matter what kind of degree she has or if she has a job. I’d much prefer a woman who had spent that time developing her home-making abilities and volunteering at the church than studying and working.

I can understand not wanting a wife who wasted a decade doing nothing, but then the question becomes why would a traditional man consider marriage to a 30-year-old woman?

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We’ll look at the advice-seeker, named Wesley, who illustrates my point nicely.

I recently got married this past summer to an amazing woman I met at a one year bible college I attended a couple years ago and it has been great. But between transferring to a new (secular) school and being constantly busy with school and work I feel like my relationship with God is constantly on the backburner, as I am not getting into the word nearly as much as I used to and my prayer life is nearly nonexistent, and because of this my relationship with my wife is not where it should be either.

I love my major and I love my wife, but they don’t seem to overlap very well, as my studies are normally more time intensive than hers and also she see’s my talking about it more as an annoyance than anything. I guess why I am writing you is because I am getting so spiritually burnt out and need advice on how to ignite/maintain my relationship with God and keep a healthy relationship with my wife and if having an aspiration of being an apologist is worth it. Not only does everyone else not see why I have picked the path I have because they see philosophy as impractical and I won’t be able to support a family with such an aspiration, but the path itself is difficult as I do not have many other fellow Christians in my classes and so I am being practically scorned in all directions. I often ask myself if it is worth it and if I should find some other path that would be more conducive to married life and family life that her and I hope to start in the foreseen future.

It’s very clear here, Wesley’s problem is not his wife. His problem is he doesn’t have virtuous friendships with male friends and is trying to use his wife to fill this hole in his life. But his is his wife, not his friend and she can’t fill this hole, and he shouldn’t be expecting her to.

So, Wesley, if by happenstance you come across this, your wife is not your friend, she is your wife. Don’t discuss philosophy her, take her dancing instead and lead her in Bible readings. Instead of trying to force her into a role in which she does not belong, find a good male friend or two who share your Christian values and discuss philosophy with them over a pint at the pub.

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I should make one last note, there’s a difference between a wife not sharing your interests and a wife deriding your interests. A wife not sharing your interests is fine; a wife who disdains your interests (and not in the harmless ‘men will be men‘ way), and by extension you, is not. Do not marry a women who contempt for those things you really like and enjoy.

I get the impression that Wesley’s problem was the first, but if it was the latter, then that is a something to be concerned about.

Also, values are not interests. Sharing values is important. Don’t marry a woman who doesn’t share your core values.

Male Friendship

I came across these two discussions of the lack of friendship among males, particularly white, heterosexual males. The dearth of male friendship is a serious problem in our modern world. The average American has only 2 close friends. While, as per the Salon article above, white, heterosexual males have the fewest friends.

This lack of friendship comes from a variety of factors, but there are three specific to men. The first is the confluence of both philia and eros under the word love, and the resultant conquering of love by eros. Due to this, in our present language “manly love” might as well mean queer. Related to this is the rise of the homosexual lifestyle in popular culture.

The Slate article almost gets this:

Chalk this heart-squeezing shift up to our limiting ideals of masculinity, which define themselves in opposition to all things feminine. Friends are empathetic, affectionate, not afraid to leave their tower of self-reliance for occasional support. You know who else is like that? Women. “Being a good friend…as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly,” Wade writes, so the boys end up opting out.

Wade doesn’t mention the rainbow elephant in the room, but I wonder whether men are less afraid of girliness here than homosexuality. In many ways, it’s a distinction without a difference, since homophobes tend to imagine gay men as effete. But if a man ever is allowed to relax his stone face, it’s around his romantic partner. Being open, communicative, vulnerable—all of these behaviors evoke love relationships. It makes a sad kind of sense that boys trying to assert their masculinity would steer clear of playing the “boyfriend” around other guys.

But as usual, they miss the mark, and make a demonstration of the third reason:

Friends are empathetic, affectionate, not afraid to leave their tower of self-reliance for occasional support. You know who else is like that? Women. “Being a good friend…as well as needing a good friend, is the equivalent of being girly,

Affectionate and empathetic? It just sounds queer.

The reason this sounds queer is these are not masculine friendships, these are feminine friendships.  (Not that the feminine mode of friendship is wrong; it’s good, but for women).

The third reason for the decline is male friendship is the colonization of the language of friendship by the feminine. The words used to describe friendships in the above articles are good examples of this: empathy, affection, intimacy, emotional support, etc. are all womanly or would be reserved for your lover; to apply these to a masculine relationship sounds gay.

If this is what friendship is painted as, of course men are going not going to have friendships. Who the hell wants to gather around in a sob circle with their male friends?

But by defining friendship as the feminine, the modern world is pushing out (has pushed out?) the ability to express male friendship through the English language.

To reestablish male friendship, we need to reestablish masculine relationships. We need to retake friendship, retake philia, retake manly love.

(Bro is a decent attempt at this, but bromance just sounds retarded and queer).

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For the theoretical framework of masculine friendship we can go back to Jack Donovan’s Way of Man. Male social bonds were formed as a part of the gang. Men bonded through hunting and war parties. They bonded not through faggy emoting, but through shared action, shared virtue, shared goals, shared suffering, and shared victory. They built each other up to work together against the common foe.

Obviously, we can’t go back to the old warband model. There’s no opposing tribes to make war against anymore outside of the ghetto (at least not until the happening), and if you tried to do so, you’d go to jail. But men can attempt to rebuild the same pattern through the creation of a gang. Read the Way of Man for more on this.

We can rebuild the male friendship without the need to go murdering our neighbours. Aristotle outlined the virtuous male friendship many centuries ago:

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing. And each is good without qualification and to his friend, for the good are both good without qualification and useful to each other. So too they are pleasant; for the good are pleasant both without qualification and to each other, since to each his own activities and others like them are pleasurable, and the actions of the good are the same or like. And such a friendship is as might be expected permanent, since there meet in it all the qualities that friends should have. For all friendship is for the sake of good or of pleasure-good or pleasure either in the abstract or such as will be enjoyed by him who has the friendly feeling-and is based on a certain resemblance; and to a friendship of good men all the qualities we have named belong in virtue of the nature of the friends themselves; for in the case of this kind of friendship the other qualities also are alike in both friends, and that which is good without qualification is also without qualification pleasant, and these are the most lovable qualities. Love and friendship therefore are found most and in their best form between such men.

But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.
…
The friendship of the good too and this alone is proof against slander; for it is not easy to trust any one talk about a man who has long been tested by oneself; and it is among good men that trust and the feeling that ‘he would never wrong me’ and all the other things that are demanded in true friendship are found. In the other kinds of friendship, however, there is nothing to prevent these evils arising. For men apply the name of friends even to those whose motive is utility, in which sense states are said to be friendly (for the alliances of states seem to aim at advantage), and to those who love each other for the sake of pleasure, in which sense children are called friends. Therefore we too ought perhaps to call such people friends, and say that there are several kinds of friendship-firstly and in the proper sense that of good men qua good, and by analogy the other kinds; for it is in virtue of something good and something akin to what is found in true friendship that they are friends, since even the pleasant is good for the lovers of pleasure. But these two kinds of friendship are not often united, nor do the same people become friends for the sake of utility and of pleasure; for things that are only incidentally connected are not often coupled together.

Barring the fact that love in this case indicates philia, but likely comes across sounding closer to eros due to our fallen language in this modern age, does this sound gay? Does it sounds womanly?

No. These are not friendships of men getting together to whine about their woes. These are friendships of men testing each other for shared virtue and working towards the mutual good.

This is manly friendship. This is what we men need to return to: a masculine view of friendship based around shared virtue and goals, rather than emotionalizing.

We need to start speaking of friendship in words that don’t sound faggy. We need to move the language of male friendship from that of a romance or an AA support-group to that of a warband. ‘Bonds of brotherhood’ and ‘shared virtue’ rather than ‘affection’ and ‘intimacy’ and ‘test’ and ‘shared suffering’ rather than ’emotional support’ and ’empathy’.

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Now the question becomes, how do we retake male friendship?

We can’t on the cultural level, other than using masculine language for male friendship to reclaim manly love and friendship from homosexuals and women.

But you can do some things on a personal level. Start a gang.

First, you need to find some good men. If you’ve got some good, reliable friends already, that’s excellent. If you don’t, look through your church, your activities, your social groups, and find men of good character and virtue with whom to bond.

Try to avoid half-men, scalzified weiners, psychological eunuchs, pc nutjobs, those lacking virtue, emos,the easily offended, and the like.

Second, start some specifically manly activities together; exclude women from these activities. Some good ones are hunting, fishing, camping, shooting, poker, gaming, etc.

Third, when at these activities talk, but not just of girls, video games, and beer; talk of deeper things. Don’t get all emotional about it, but talk of philosophy, religion, metaphysics, goals, ambitions, virtue, politics,

Once you’ve gotten close to some men, you can talk of emotional things. Again, don’t get all sobby and faggy about it, but there’s nothing out of place with a matter-of-fact discussion of emotions that may be afflicting you once a close enough bond has been formed.

The goal is to build a solid group of men who have your back and whose back you have.

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As for myself, some of us our in a book club; when my choice of book comes it will be the Way of Man, to help put the idea of forming a gang in explicit turns in my social circles. I already have a couple solid guys I’ve been friends with for over a decade and whom I’m close to. This will form the core of the gang and there’re others whom could be a part. Over the summer I tried to arrange days in the woods shooting to move some of my friends towards a more warband-esque grouping; it never turned out, but one of the core is planning to buy a gun and the other really wants to but hasn’t been able to on the planned days; others have expressed interest in shooting as well. So come spring, I should be able to get some days in the woods going, and maybe even convince a few to hunt with me next fall. But beside that, we’ve started fishing over summer, we go camping once a year, and we game regularly. So things look well in that respect.

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So, go an do likewise. Read the Way of Man to develop an idea of masculine friendship, make some solid male friendships, and try to make those male friendships you do have into a stronger, deeper bond. Form your own gang, your own warband.

For friendship is important, and every man needs his comrades-in-arms.

Thoughts on Avoiding LTRs

At the end of my recent post, Dating and Verbalization, I left this little bit:

If you’re looking for an LTR or a girlfriend. Just don’t; it’s stupid. If you want sex, get sex through an STR, FWB, or ONS. If you want companionship, get a male friend or a dog. If you want a family and life-partner, get a wife. Getting a girlfriend is the worst of all three worlds while minimizing the benefits of any of them.

I was asked to talk more about it in the comments. Given that I was already planning to write more on it and would have had the post not already been at the 2000+ word mark and had I not run out of time, I will do so here.

Before I begin, I should note that my use of a girlfriend in this case denotes a women with which a man has a long-term relationship (in this case, more than a year) that may or may not include a live-in relationship. It does not include a girlfriend from a short-term relationship or a potential wife you are currently spending time with testing for marriage-potential that you would label a girlfriend. Now, onto my previous assertion.

There are three primary reasons a man pursues a woman romantically: sex, companionship, and for a life-partner/family. Given the vagaries of human interaction, they are probably others, but those are the main ones.

If you are looking for just sex, use short-term relationships of under half a year or friends with benefits. Previous calculations I have done, calculated the economic cost of sex was less the longer your relationship lasted. For the most part though, there was declining marginal utility as the relationship extended. After the first few months, the cost of sex stopped going down significantly.

Also, this was a simplified, assume-a-can-opener calculation. It mostly assumed that the immaterial costs and benefits of a relationship, such as time invested, emotional investment, commitment, and companionship, evened themselves out over time.

Obviously, that is not the case. As the relationship increases in length, it increases in “seriousness” or, at least, the demand for “seriousness” and more commitment from the other half of the relationship. This increases the costs of the relationship, ie. investments in the relationship that don’t lead to sex. For example, going to her mother’s birthday party or picking her up when her car breaks down.

In other words, the longer a relationship continues, the rate of depreciation of the cost of sex in material investment decreases, but the cost of sex in non-material investment increases. Of course, if you choose to live together, both material and non-material investment explodes, bad move.

If sex is what you want, the longer the relationship goes, the more you are investing to receive it. As well, due to the level of commitment a girlfriend requires, you are not allowed to seek out other sexual outlets in which to invest, limiting your options. A relationship of longer than a half-year or so is a bad investment for sex.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for having a sexual partner you can love and trust implicitly, but in that case, get married. Otherwise, there is always that edge of uncertainty eating at that trust.

Next companionship. If you want someone to talk to and hang out with get a male friend. If you want someone to meet you happily when you get home and snuggle up beside you while you watch TV get a dog.

The problem with companionship within a long-term relationship is that it comes with so much other baggage. You can (and should) have a male friendship be the end in itself, but you can not have a long-term relationship and have the companionship be an end in itself. The addition of romance changes the nature of the relationship. It makes the companionship a means rather than an end, limiting the depth of the companionship. (For more on male/female friendship see here).

For this reasons, any companionship within a relationship is contingent on the other aspects of the relationship. If the other parts of the relationship fails, the companionship ends as well. In addition, a relationship without life-long, will almost inevitably end and it is known it will inevitably end (otherwise, the couple would have married). Because of the contingency and purposefully limited time-frame of the relationship, the companionship can never be as deep or as true as that in a male friendship which has no such contingencies or time frames.

Onto life-partner/family.

A marriage (at least prior to no-fault divorce) provides stability in which to raise a family. It provides an commitment and guarantee of someone you can rely on when needed. It provides a high level of trust and reliability. A marriage is something you can build a mutual life and family together around.

On the other hand, while a long-term relationship has a certain level of commitment, it can be ended at any time. There are no legal or cultural bonds holding the relationship together. There is simply not enough stability and commitment in which to create a family or fully build your lives together.

Now some would say a no-fault marriage could be ended at any time and, to some extent, this is true. But even in these degenerate times marriage still holds a certain cultural value. All but the most morally bankrupt people will put some effort into preserving their marriage and there is a certain level of cultural pressure to work on a marriage that is not their for a LTR. There are also legal commitments that work to support a marriage. While marriage is not as ironclad as it used to be, there are still some moderately strong cultural, moral, and legal forces working to preserve people’s marriages.

So as you can see, the long-term relationship offers only a weakened version of the benefits of marriage, short-term relationships, and/or friendship, while simultaneously having the costs of all. You get sex, but it’s neither the hedonic pleasure-high of STR’s, ONS’, and FWB’s nor the all-consuming, spiritually-fulfilling, trusting love of marriage. You have too much commitment to go outside the relationship and have to invest a lot in the relationship, but you do not have enough commitment and stability to build a mutual life and family together. You have a certain level of companionship, but its always limited by its nature. As I said, you have all the disadvantages of all three worlds, while minimizing the benefits of any of them. It’s a very lukewarm type of relationship.

Of course, the long-term girlfriend is rational in one scenario. Where you are looking for a moderate amount of commitment, but not too much, a moderate, but limited, level of companionship, and regular sexual access with a singular partner at a not too high cost. But I don’t see the point in pursuing such a lukewarm strategy. It lacks both the hedonic thrills of being a player and the meaningfulness of a strong marriage and family. Don’t settle for mediocrity.

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To conclude, some talk on morality.

Some might wonder, why I, a Christian, am advocating one night stands and am opposed to long-term relationships. Isn’t a loving relationship what Christians should support?

The answer is I am not advocating either. In fact, I hereby warn all my readers, on the penalty of eternal judgment, to avoid any sexual relationship outside marriage and any romantic relationship outside of marriage and the pursuit thereof, and to repent of their immorality and give their hearts to Jesus.

But confusion on this might come from the fact that long-term relationships are often seen as being “morally superior” in some way to random hook-ups.  This is wrong. Christians should be opposed to any romantic relationship other than marriage. Romantic love is not the basis of sex or marriage in the Christian view, marriage is the basis of both sex and romantic love. Anything else is sin. If you are a Christian advocating long-term romantic relationships, your view of Christian sexual morality is fundamentally flawed.

I repeat, there is absolutely NO moral difference between friends with benefits, a living-together relationship, a one-night stand, prostitution, and a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. There is not the tiniest bit of moral difference between Roissy’s pump’n’dump strategy, dissention’s advocacy of escorts, and Susan Walsh’s advocacy of “meaningful” relationships.

Marriage is the only relationship in which sexuality can morally be expressed. The marriage and the pursuit thereof is the only one in which romantic expressions are not sinful.

Sex is made for marriage, romance is made for marriage and the lead-up in marriage.

Seeking to sate your lust in an ONS is sin, seeking to sate your passion in a long-term relationship is sin.

For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own kbody2 in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God (1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, ESV)

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. (Song of Solomon 8:4, ESV)

That being said, I do not judge non-Christians for their moral choices. The condition of their souls is between them and God. My duty is to warn them of their sin and its consequences out of love and let the Holy Spirit work. If they do not heed my warnings, their blood is on their own head.

So morally, do not engage in sex outside marriage.

But as a purely practical matter, if a male sinner is planning to fornicate, obtaining temporal pleasure through low-level commitment relationships is likely the materially preferable option.