Here's What Going Abroad Has Taught Me About Bromance

By Aaron Grubbs on October 28, 2016

In the last few weeks I’ve had some experiences that confirmed something I was always mildly aware of but mostly just accepted as normal in America. Starting off, for those of you that wouldn’t know or just missed the memo, I’m living in Germany right now and will be for about another 10-11 months. It’s my first week of classes this week and international student orientation week was two weeks ago. Since then the number of people I’ve met and the friends I’ve made has gone up astronomically compared to the first couple of months I was here, broke, and just waiting for classes to start. And here lately I’ve had something on my mind a lot.

Why is it that guy-guy friendships can be so difficult to initiate as compared to a guy-girl or girl-girl one?

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When a guy meets another guy for the first time and wants to spark up a friendship it can be incredibly awkward and difficult at times. And I’m not talking about pithy, meaningless, shallow at best, conversations in a group setting in class or something. For an outgoing person like myself that’s easy. But when comparing setting me in a room alone with a guy I just met versus sitting in a room with a girl I just met, conversation with the girl would come so much more naturally to me.

There’s this dynamic of competition almost. Like we’re “proving our masculinity.” And to all the social justice warrior feminists out there that make fun of it as being an ego fueled, chauvinist display of machismo, I say to you: Of course you think that. Of course you don’t understand. You’re a woman who could never have any idea what it is to be a man just like we could never have any idea what it is to be a woman.

When a guy meets another guy in America(at least in my experience) there is an expectation that if he doesn’t maintain enough distance and display enough masculinity he could be rejected and perceived to be weak or boring or worse yet, hitting on the other guy. This barrier, this expectation for a lack of intimacy, creates such a huge roadblock that it actually feels more difficult to make a new guy friend than it does to get a date; Even when facing this culture of women who dismiss men’s approaches no matter how he acts or what he says (but that’s veering in another direction entirely).

Getting back to the point, what I’ve realized living in Germany is that, while America is not a wasteland, the grass is certainly greener on the other side.

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The guys I’ve met here come from cultures all over and are so much more open, the dynamic is just simpler. It’s completely reasonable (and honestly so refreshing) for a guy friend to give you a nice, firm, masculine hand shake and follow it up with “Wow! You look really good today, my friend!” An interaction that I had previously assumed was strictly reserved for girl-girl and guy-girl friendships.

While my closest friends have always been guys, I also always found it far easier to initiate friendships with girls because the willingness to become friends has always seemed so much more apparent in girls than guys. That’s something I felt very prominently when first coming to FSU last year and I complained to my roommate, Austin(a fantastic dood by the way) about how guys in Tallahassee just don’t seem at all interested in making new friends. It’s just all about meeting a girl if you can. And it’s just so interesting to find that, in fact, the initiation of friendships with other guys can feel just like the initiation of one with girls, if both parties are willing to drop the facade. To feel like there isn’t some underlying show or act that you’re having to put on airs about, just two doods that enjoy each other’s company and want to get to know each other.

It’s really something, I have to say.

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Multiple times writing this I found myself having to fight off the urge to point out that making guy friends here is in no way a flirtatious thing or a mutual attraction thing like some guy/girl friendships can start out like. And I think THAT’S exactly my point! Men so often have it drilled into them that too personal of an interaction with another male must somehow be “gay” and that can spark rejection from the other men involved.

Again getting into another issue of homosexuality there a bit but I’m just going to say that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay. That’s just beside the point. The point is the fear of rejection for being seen as soliciting something that the other isn’t willing to offer. Similar to approaching a girl but with the still present stigma of homosexuality as well. Something deemed far more repulsive, I believe, for a male than a female by those with this bigotry in their heart.

The result is a culture of men who stay closed up emotionally to the people that can understand them best… OTHER MEN!

So to all the fellas out there… Take a break from the ladies engulfing the campus and approach one of your male counterparts! Find a new bro! Don’t be so worried about not seeming masculine enough. To reference an adapted version of mom’s best advice: He’s just a person too so just be yourself!

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