Men Need Bond Friends

Most men have at least one friend and some men have many friends who can be considered as having reached special status when it comes to accessing the various parts of his life. This is buddy status – a friend who is there for games, beer, adventure, and just hanging out. This is the buddy who helps you move into a new apartment; picks you up at the airport to give you a ride home; finds time to relax on the boat with you; and is ready to do almost anything with and for you. Buddies are invaluable to any man.

There is another kind of buddy who has gone beyond platonic status and reached a position where a unique bond is formed between the two men. Unlike a buddy who’s around for fun, this special friend is that and far more. I call him a bond friend - a male friend with whom a man shares a deep and intimate nonsexual connection. This physical and emotional attachment helps a man open to another his very soul, his inner vault of dark shadows where the most private, personal truths about the man are stored and shielded.

The reality is that this kind of bond between two men is quite rare. Men don’t normally develop or easily maintain deep emotional connections with other men. Most of our relationships with men are superficial and allow only for extended posturing. Unlike boyhood, where our neighborhood pals were an all-consuming part of our lives, and with whom we learned about the world around us, manhood is a very private, self-taught place that is grounded in secluded self-reliance. We don’t need man-pals to help us navigate the world and learn about life together. We only need them for recreation and leisure, the two domains of a man’s life that require nothing of the soul.

It’s completely different for women, who tend to have more friends with whom they make deep associations. Perhaps this is most easily witnessed when a group of women at a dinner party in a restaurant get up in mass and all sashay to the powder room together as though nothing can separate them. Nothing physical, nothing emotional, and nothing biological. Never once in my life have I ever witnessed a group of guys glide to the restroom together like they were some kind of wolf pack. It just doesn’t happen with men.

Men are discouraged from developing intimate connections with other men. However, if that connection is made then the men are gay, of course. For this reason, heterosexual men are more likely to enjoy close connections with other women, both single and married. Women are the only outlets many men have to convey their deepest needs. There are no other options for a man who intends to preserve every element of his masculinity that he has carefully crafted his entire life. A man’s greatest fear is to have his manhood questioned and to be labeled effeminate, a wuss, or worse - a homosexual.

Men have an outlet if they have a romantic partner with whom they can be vulnerable. It’s not the same as opening up to another man because women don’t know what it’s like to be a man. But it is an outlet, and perhaps that’s better than nothing. Yet, even here a man’s openness to his girlfriend or wife is guarded and framed. Men are conditioned to be unemotional, and whatever he has inside that he wants to share will usually be offered without any feeling whatsoever. Masculine men don’t show emotion because to do so would be admitting weakness. A man cannot be both manly and feeble. If a man is vulnerable he is not virile.

We experience life through emotion. Our emotions connect us to everything around us – the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly. Everything our senses identify comes to us with an emotion. So, when men disassociate themselves from their emotions, they are withdrawing from life, disconnecting from the world around them only to become an isolated, detached, barren human being.

In masculinized America there are limits to male affection, but being bonded to another man in intimate friendship doesn’t mean the two men are sleeping together and having sex. This kind of profoundly close relationship between men used to be quite common prior to the 20th century. The book The Overflowing of Friendship and the website The Art of Manliness are good places to start to uncover just what is was like to have a bond friend before the Marlboro matrix smothered them out.

I have been fortunate to have had three bond friends over the course of my life. The first was Adrian while we were both in high school together. (see The Gift of Gay Porn 1) Adrian was a senior and I was a freshman but the age difference didn’t keep us apart. I don’t remember the first time I saw Adrian, but it wasn’t long until I realized that I wanted him to be a deeper part of my life. However, that deeper connection would prove to be elusive that year in school together, and it wasn’t until he graduated when that bond was set.

We had gone to see a movie with another friend in another city when we returned late that night to drop Adrian off at the Bible camp where he was a counselor for the summer before he started college. When it was time to say goodbye, I lingered. For the first time in my life I told another man I loved him. That was something I had never done with my father, my brothers, or my neighborhood pals. I loved Adrian deeply. We hugged – which was the first time I ever hugged another man. Then and there a bond was born between us that grew stronger with each passing year, even though we did not maintain close contact. He became like a brother, and he remains so to this day, nearly five decades later.

The second bond friend was Bill with whom I worked one summer in Galveston (see Demons Underfoot). I was heading out the door of the house we were renting to go and apply for a job with the Galveston school district when Bill ran out of the house and asked where I was headed. I told him; he asked to come along; we were both hired. We spent most of every day that summer together on a work crew that consisted of ten other young black men.

Our relationship was not particularly physical or emotional, but it was uniquely intimate. We could talk about anything. Looking back its hard to describe the feelings we had for each other because they were not particularly demonstrative. If you’d observed us together you would not have noticed anything unusual. We acted normally like any two guys would normally act. Yet, when the summer project ended and I came back to Iowa and he returned to Pennsylvania, my spirit went into a state of mourning. Again, this is hard to describe, but I actually mourned the loss of his presence in my life for two full years. It was as though my soul had lost an arm. The arm was gone but I still could feel where it had been. Sadly, I never saw Bill again.

The third bond friend in my life was Oliver (see Find a Safe Place to Die). With Oliver my connection to him began nearly instantaneously after meeting him for the first time. What’s remarkable is that he sensed the same thing about me. You can read about how he helped me cope with the loss of my son in the post mentioned above. Of the three bond friends I’ve had in my life, Oliver is the one I’d choose to see again because his influence was as powerful an influence as a man can have over another.

It’s one thing to recognize the need for a bond friend, but it’s quite another to find such a straight-mate. Men who are ready for deep intimate friendships with other men don’t advertise themselves. The everyday masks men wear do a good job of concealing any desire, regardless of how slight or strong, a man might have to cultivate a close connection with another man.

Unfortunately, at this point the terrain gets tough to manage. There are no easy ways to find a bond friend without some level of intimidation or even humiliation. A bond friend seeker will have to make the choice of removing the Marlboro mask long enough for other men to recognize that he’s looking for something far richer than time spent with a beer guzzler. The removal of that mask is dangerous because it could mean the seeker will be labeled gay or bi-curious, and these labels will stick for a very long time.

Yet, if the seeker has the courage to find a bond friend, the reward for that nerve is priceless. No other relationship in a man’s life can compare to the deep vibrancy that a bond friend offers. In the Bible, David and Jonathon had such a relationship. David was an outlaw and Jonathan was the son of the king who was trying to kill him. Despite this tension that enveloped the development of their friendship, the bond between them grew to such an extent that upon Jonathan’s untimely death in battle, David wrote in the Psalms that his love for Jonathan exceeded his love for any woman he had ever known.

That love, that bond, that emotional intimacy is what a bond friend can offer, and it is worth every ounce of strength I have to find it. I know what I’m writing about because I’ve found this bond before in Adrian, Bill, and Oliver. For me the question is not why or when, but who. Who will be my next bond friend? Where in the world is he, and how in the world will he come into mine?