Close male friendships


How To Build & Maintain Guy Friends?

What are guy friendships? Do you have guy friends? Are you in a guy friendship? Do you find it hard to make guy friends who are not your co-workers? Are you interested in finding the right guy friendships? Do you find yourself in more female friendships than guy ones? Finally, are you looking for information on how guy friendships work? If your answer is yes to any or all of these questions, this article is for you.

Hi. My name is Sean Galla, a facilitator for guy friendship groups like men support groups, men’s forums, and men’s groups. In my line of work, I create a platform where men can meet other men in a safe environment that allows them to nurture guy friendships. I have seen firsthand how important it is for every man to have friends.

In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about making guy friends and joining male friends groups.

Table of Contents:

  • 1 Why Guy Friendships Are Difficult?
  • 2 Why Men Need Guy Friendships?
  • 3 How to Form Guy Friendships?
  • 4 The Best Places to Make Guy Friendships
  • 5 Conclusion

Written by

Sean Galla

An experienced facilitator, community builder and Peer Support Specialist, Sean has been running men's groups for 10+ years. &nbspRead Sean's Full Author Bio.

Why Guy Friendships Are Difficult?

When it comes to friendships, most men, especially straight men, have difficulty really understanding the actual meaning of having friends.

Simply put, male friends are guys with whom you share a mostly platonic friendship instead of romantic relationships. Therefore, if you have one or a few guy friends, it can be said that you are in a guy friendship.

Close male friends share a sense of brotherhood in little things. For example, they often spend time in a group setup where they share, learn and explore together. As a result, they have a deep level of connection that is different from what is found in a romantic relationship.

Sometimes, male friends have an unspoken or spoken commitment to one another, including being there for each other emotionally. Close male friendships accommodate and encourage vulnerability around one other.  

On the other hand, if you’re looking for ideas about Bro Date, then join mensgroup. com today!

Why Men Need Guy Friendships?

While some men can have tons of guy friends, others have a hard time making friends in general. As a man gets older, you tend to retain a few male friends with hardly the chance to make new ones. Yet, according to research, men still crave intimacy in friendships, just as women do.

All humans are social creatures. We are born to socialize and live in a community. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, everyone can benefit from interpersonal connections and camaraderie to get emotional support when you need it.

Research shows that it has become increasingly difficult to make meaningful friendships or even retain old ones in this growing digital age.

For most men, it becomes harder to meet people, maintain long-term friendships or emotional intimacy with other men, and even harder to keep old friends.

Friends act as accountability partners. Sociologists claim that people are more likely to achieve a goal when they are held accountable. So when you have a bestie, they follow up on your progress to achieve your goals because they want the best for you.

Lack of friends causes loneliness.

Not having close friendships is not advisable as it leads to prolonged loneliness, which affects a man’s emotions, cognition, health, and behavior. Moreover, the lack of a close-knit group of male friends or even a best friend causes physiological aging in men. 

Loneliness is one of the greatest threats to men’s health. Most men have a hard time admitting that they are lonely or need more male friends because growing up, most men were never taught the importance of having a close group of male friends. But, according to scientific research, loneliness can trigger signal hormones and molecules that dictate human behavior, lasting effects on men’s mental health.

Lack of friends is bad for your health.

Emotional isolation is one of the leading causes of lifestyle vices and diseases like obesity, smoking, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, tumors, high blood pressure, and other neurodegenerative behaviors detrimental to a man’s wellbeing.

Having a group of people, you can call good friends gives you access to continuous wellness support whenever you need it. It also helps in fighting social anxiety by learning to be around people more often.

From a young age, making friends as a young man comes more naturally. However, as boys grow older, especially in high school, fear takes over and affects their effortless ability to make male friends. When a man gets into late adolescence, most young men lose their close friends because being part of a group of guy friends is believed to be gay, girly, or immature.

At this stage, young men start to focus more on ensuring they do not come off as gay men, which is often associated with close male friendships, instead of making lasting male friendships, building social connections, and spending time with their friends, which often causes them to let go of their closest friendships.

It can cause toxic masculinity.

When young men ignore the need for male friends or social networks, it often leads to a generation of emotionally stoic, autonomous, and isolated adult males with personal issues.

These men try to live up to societal expectations and beliefs about what a man is and how a male friendship should look. Men have been programmed to believe that they are not allowed to be vulnerable, show emotions, or allow people to get too close to them. This forces them to lead a lonely life away from healthy men’s friendships.

How to Form Guy Friendships?
Be approachable

When hoping to make new guy friends, you need to possess a level of approachability. When in a social setup, smile at other people and nod in greeting. Ensure your body language remains relaxed, which signals that you are open to conversation and new friendships.

Be knowledgeable in a variety of topics.

You find certain things easy to talk about, while others are a big deal and do not come naturally to you. To make friends and keep them, you need to be conversant with issues that are of interest to men. This can include sports, politics, economics, memes, video games, and even cars. This will make it easier for you to start conversations and keep them interesting, regardless of the men you meet.

 Be interested in knowing new people.

You are more likely to keep someone interested when you shoe interested in getting to know them. You can ask open-ended questions about his interests and himself as a person. When you get to know him, they will also be interested in getting to know you. While at it, avoid questions that only call for yes or no answers and instead ask questions that engage them more.

Always be honest

Honesty is one of the most valuable traits in friendships. It is important to show your potential new friends the real you as this is the person they are interested in. do not pretend to be someone you are not as it will eventually come out, and you’ll have a hard time living up to expectations. 

Attend meetups and hangouts

Once you hit it off with a man you want to make your friend, you can invite them for another hangout session away from the current setting. You can make them feel included by tagging them along for events and meetups. You can let him know he is welcome to join you.

The Best Places to Make Guy Friendships

Sometimes, the easiest way to make guy friends is by joining a male friends group on social media or online. Joining a men’s group ensures you build friendships that meet your needs from the start. In addition, male friend groups ensure you meet like-minded men who share your interests, ideas, and plans.

Everyman

This benefit corporation brings together men from all walks of life to space to freely exercise their emotions to lead a fulfilling and successful life. Everyman uses life-coaching, events, and retreats as part of their service delivery to allow men to be themselves in a natural habitat.

Guy Burstein 

Guy Burstein is a self-help forum that encourages healing, growth, and transformation. It is specifically created for men who want to achieve a higher self-awareness and anyone looking to cultivate better personal male relationships or Bromance.

Men’s Group

Men’s Group is a guy friendships group that creates and facilitates conversations between guys who are interested in personal growth. A big part of our group focusses on creating discussions and friendships through our thriving forums, drop-in groups, and online men’s groups that help guys grow and give them the social time they want.

Men’s Group is an online-based support group and forum that focuses on men and the needs of a lot of men. It offers a platform where men from different parts of the world get together to discuss everyday real men issues that affect men’s well-being.

Since it is an online-based friends group for men, you can join a meeting from the comfort of your home or office. Mensgroup ensures there are regular meetings online to ensure men can get the support they need at any time, whether you are an American in New York or European in London, especially now that it is harder to meet face to face for physical meetings.

Conclusion

If you are interested in making guy friends, it is time to put in the work to cultivate the friendship and make it what you and your new best friend want it to be. First, join a fraternity or a men’s group to increase your chances of making new male friends. Mensgroup is one of the best places to make friends with whom you share common interests, goals, and ideas.

*Sources: 1. Qualities That Promote Male Friendship 2. Are male friendships harder? 3. Male friendships: Implications from research for family therapy 4. Male friendships, their importance, and how to develop them 5. The Importance of Male Friendship, Man Dates, and Vulnerability

Why most men don't have enough close friends

Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Stress, But Less newsletter. Our six-part mindfulness guide will inform and inspire you to reduce stress while learning how to harness it.

CNN  — 

cms.cnn.com/_components/paragraph/instances/paragraph_51612E13-4B15-4147-145A-BF17E8767604@published" data-editable="text" data-component-name="paragraph"> Friendships aren’t just about those you sit with on the school bus or play alongside on your childhood baseball team — they are a core component of the human experience, experts say.

But making and retaining deep, meaningful friendships as an adult is hard, especially for men, according to research.

Less than half of men report being satisfied with their friendships, and only about 1 in 5 said they had received emotional support from a friend in the last week, compared with 4 in 10 women, according to a 2021 survey from the Survey Center on American Life.

Children may have trouble making friends as they return to in-person interactions. Experts shared how to help them create genuine connections and making a good first impression.

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Your kids may need help making friends after the big pandemic pause. Here's how

The falling off of friendships between men begins around middle and late adolescence and grows starker in adulthood, said Judy Yi-Chung Chu, who teaches a class on boys’ psychological development at Stanford University in California. And those who do maintain friendships with other men say they tend to have lower levels of emotional intimacy than women report.

“Boys don’t start emotionally disconnected; they become emotionally disconnected,” said Dr. Niobe Way, a researcher and a professor of applied psychology at New York University.

All humans have the innate capacity and desire for close, emotionally intimate connections with others. We need these relationships for survival as babies and then to thrive as we get older, Chu said.

Research has shown close friendships protect our mental and physical health, she added. And men who prioritize those relationships are fighting off one of the most harmful things to human health — loneliness, said Dr. Frank Sileo, a psychologist based in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

“What (men) are at risk of losing is this sense of not being alone in the world or not being alone in their experience,” Sileo said. Research has shown “disclosure of emotional distress improved (men’s) emotional well-being, increased feelings of being understood and resulted in less reported loneliness,” he added.

Just as many men strive to eat right, exercise, succeed in their careers and raise children , men should prioritize developing friendships as adults, he said.

When Sileo first began conducting research on male friendships in 1995, many participants assumed his survey was about homosexuality, he said. Such stereotypes that male bonding would be, or become, sexual in nature are inaccurate, but revealed some of what may be holding some men back from deep friendships, he added.

Assumptions 27 years later might be different, but social pressures remain that make it difficult for men to express the vulnerability and intimacy needed for close friendships, Sileo said.

We are all born with two sides of ourselves: the hard side that is stoic and independent and the soft one that is vulnerable and interdependent, said Way, author of “Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection.”

People significantly underestimate how much their friends and old acquaintances appreciate hearing from them.

InsideCreativeHouse/Adobe Stock

Why you should reach out to old friends

The hard side has been characterized as masculine and inherently preferable, and the soft side has been seen as feminine and lesser than, Way said.

Boys receive messages that growing up and “manning up” mean shedding that soft side — a mindset that neuroscience, social science and developmental psychology all show is harmful to them, Way said.

“We gender relationships as feminine,” Chu said. “If that’s a feminine thing, it becomes a weakness or a liability if (men) admit to needing friendships.

Characterizing the gender of these experiences has a clear impact, Sileo said. Men who were more emotionally restricted, focused on power and who scored high on surveys measuring homophobia are less likely to have intimate and close friendships, he said.

And the drive to toughen up and never show vulnerability that restricts men from friendships can lead them to loneliness, violence and anger, Way said.

“We live in a culture that clashes with our nature,” she said. “If we raise children to go against their nature, we shouldn’t be surprised if some of those children grow up to struggle.”

Heterosexual men seeking closeness might turn to those they see as better at building relationships and feel comfortable exploring their vulnerability with: the women in their lives and their romantic partners, Way said.

It may seem like a good solution, but it works neither for the men nor the women they look to, Sileo said.

Putting everything on a romantic partner can strain a relationship, he said, whether it is going to a female partner exclusively for emotional support or depending on her to cultivate friendships and get-togethers for holidays and weekends.

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How Friendsgiving found its place in the holiday season

It is crucial to have multiple people to go to for support for different perspectives, Chu added.

“(Men) need to know it’s not just a woman thing,” she said. “They need to know that men can do it, too.”

Community is important, and keeping struggles, questions and concerns with one person or one relationship doesn’t always provide the best help to see them through, Way said.

“A male partner thinks it’s betrayal to talk to another person,” Way said, “but the female partner is saying ‘please do it, please get other perspectives.’”

If you are wishing you had close friendships or that the ones you have went deeper, experts say it’s OK to start small.

You don’t even have to disclose your own vulnerabilities at first, Chu said.

“A very powerful place to start is listening and asking real questions,” she said. “All people love when they can trust that this situation is safe and that someone is genuinely interested in them.”

The key is to move beyond banter and general niceties and ask questions you find meaningful, such as what friends like about their jobs or what happens to their feelings after breakups, Way said. Don’t worry, it’s not rude to do so. Most people report wanting to be asked these questions, she said.

Courtesy of Ivy Vann

How adults can make friends now

Each relationship has its own rules and protocol, and it’s good to work within these, Sileo said. You might start asking something of a friend and find that person is hesitant to talk about it, Chu said. If this is the case, you can jump in and offer your own vulnerability by talking about how that topic might be bothering you or how you’ve been thinking about it.

Sometimes the rules of the relationship might mean avoiding the vulnerability of sitting face-to-face, Sileo said.

In those cases, find an activity such as the gym, work or a community project where you can connect side by side through a shared purpose, Sileo added.

And if you need to build friendships from scratch, follow the lead of the women in your life and ask someone to grab coffee or a bite to eat, Way said.

Putting in time, effort and intention is the key, Sileo said. Showing up and spending time is crucial to building those important friendships.

“Quality counts here,” he said. “If you can have a handful of friends that are quality, that’s better than having a slew of friends.”

came up with a word for strong male friendship

minimalism

Author:

minimalism

May 12, 2021 18:08

Tags: actors  friendship  celebrities  interesting  people  fame  photo  show business  

4679

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A new term was coined not so long ago. It is used to denote a close emotional bond between two male friends. This form of intimacy excludes intimate relationships.

Such relationships are sometimes called "male crushes" because the level of affection is very high. Indeed, why can girl girlfriends show off their close friendship while men have to pretend they're too tough to hug their best friend? Perhaps it's time to stop the taboo of strong male friendship.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston

Source:

Every time they cross paths somewhere, everyone can immediately see how these two actors relate to each other. They met on the set of the movie "War Horse" and immediately struck up a strong friendship. This tandem even has its own army of fans.

Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey

Source:

Before True Detective, we knew these two as great comedians. The HBO series gave them the opportunity to reveal themselves as dramatic actors. The first time they met at 1998 (the series "Ed from TV"), and almost 10 years later, in 2008, they played together in the movie "Surfer".
When in 2013 McConaughey got the lead role in True Detective, it was he who persuaded the director to take on the second lead - Woody.
They are still best friends and go on holiday together every year.

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender

Source:

Fans from all over the world adore watching their relationship. Their joint interviews are an amazingly funny and witty spectacle. Their most popular joint interview was with Graham Norton. Of course, fans can't resist fan art about them being a couple, but it's just a great male friendship.

Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul

Source:

They met when the shooting of the series "Breaking Bad" began. Interestingly, Pinkman, Aaron Paul's character, was supposed to die at the end of the first season, but the showrunners liked the Cranston-Paul duo so much that they not only didn't kill Pinkman, but made him the second (actually equal) main character.

Source:

Brian helped Aaron, who had only small episodes in the series before filming Breaking Bad, in working on his difficult role, shared his experience and eventually they became close friends. So much so that they continued to communicate at the end of filming and even released a joint brand of Mexican mezcal. They post very cute joint photos on their accounts.

Zach Braff and Donald Faison

Source:

This couple differs little from their on-screen characters in the series "Clinic" Turk and JD. They also love to hang out together or go on trips. In their Instagram * accounts, joint photos regularly appear from various parts of the country.
They touchingly congratulate each other on all the holidays, and during the pandemic they missed each other so much that they could not even hold back their tears during a joint live broadcast on Instagram *.

Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston

Source:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most successful box office franchises in Hollywood. And one of the fan favorite bromances. Friendship between Hemsworth and Hiddleston arose literally from the very first days of filming the movie "Thor". They've been best friends for ten years now, and when asked in a 2015 interview with Hemsworth about his relationship with Tom, he bluntly replied, "It's a bromance, baby. "

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum

Source:

When these two starred in the movie "Macho and Nerd" they did not have to try hard to portray best friends. They are best friends in life, so much so that in an interview, Tatum's wife jokingly admitted that when the three of them go to parties, she feels like the third wheel.

Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law

Source:

This couple is connected by a long-standing strong male friendship. And if you look at their joint interviews, they make fun of each other like an elderly married couple.

* Banned in Russia

Source:

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Tags: actors  friendship  celebrities  interesting  people  glory  photo  show business  

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Platonic love of today: what is bromance

Society's move away from toxic masculinity and homophobia has reformed friendships between men. Understanding what bromance is

Valentine's Day, aka DSV, aka Valentine's Day, is a perfect example of a "commercial holiday" that has conquered the world. It is loved and widely celebrated (in 2022, Americans planned to spend $ 23.9 billion on this day) and at the same time criticized for overconsumption and creating a stir. In addition, in the hottest pre-holiday period, people without a couple can feel anxiety, because they seem to be forced from afar to watch someone else's happiness, flavored with valentine cards and bouquets. Not surprisingly, non-romantic alternatives to SAR have begun to emerge, such as Galentine's Day celebrated by girlfriends on February 13th to highlight the equally important role of friendship, or the joking Singles Awareness Day that runs parallel to SAR, but , as the name implies, is intended for those who do not have a pair.

The editors of RBC Trends also decided to look at St. Valentine's Day in a new way, because it can be dedicated not only to romantic love. Therefore, we have prepared our own “Valentine” for our readers and collected materials about the most diverse manifestations of this feeling. Everything is here - from love for yourself, for family and friends, for nature and animals, for colleagues - to passion for technology.

The term "bromance" is used online to define a non-sexual relationship between two or more men that is considered deeper than a friendship. These are homosocial relationships that transcend normal male friendships and sometimes match or even surpass romantic relationships with women.

Although the word "bromance" is a mixture of "brother" and "romance", bromance is not a romantic relationship. What separates bromance from the typical friendship between men is the high level of emotional intimacy.

What Research Says

The theme of The Privilege of Bromance: A Critical Appraisal of Romantic and Bromantic Relationships, published in Men and Masculinities (a collaborative effort between the Universities of Bedfordshire and Winchester), focused on the nature of bromance, intimate non-sexual relationships between men.

The authors sought to find out what young people understood by bromance, to what extent they valued this relationship and how this friendship was carried out. The men were specifically asked about their willingness to share secrets with their "Bromantic" friends, as well as their level of emotional and physical intimacy with them.

All the men interviewed said they had at least one bromance in their lives, and they all gave similar definitions: "bromance" - a relationship with deep emotional opening. Some have described their experience as a romance without physical intimacy, while others have referred to their relationship as a brotherhood. All subjects agreed that this type of relationship has a positive impact on their lives.

Study lead author Stephan Robinson of the University of Winchester and his co-authors, Eric Anderson and Adam White, found that openness to bromance is highly influenced by cultural attitudes towards homosexuality.

One of the researchers, Professor Eric Anderson, said: “The increase in the number of bromances is directly related to the decrease in homophobia. It signals that young heterosexual men are no longer willing to fall into the trap of old, conservative notions of masculinity."

The authors of the study also believe that these relationships can lead to a more emotional and healthy male culture without toxic masculinity.

"For those dealing with depressive symptoms or social anxiety, bromances may offer a coping path," Robinson said.

Also, a study published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology showed that the presence of bromance was associated with a reduction in problems such as anxiety, depression, heart disease, as well as impaired memory and concentration.

A study by Elizabeth Jay Chen of the University of Texas states that modern society has shown a collective interest in redefining some of the traditional restrictions on male friendship and potentially changing concepts of gender, sexuality, and intimacy.

According to sociologist Peter Nardi, it has become more acceptable for men to show some emotions.

“Bromance is a relatively new term in the sociocultural lexicon, but by no means a new phenomenon in the world and in psychology in particular. In fact, this is little more than a friendly relationship between two men, in which there is no sexual connotation. Unfortunately, due to homophobia, both external and internal, men often limit themselves in manifestations of tender friendly feelings. Of course, this is also influenced by patriarchal attitudes, which “forbid” men to experience strong emotions, let alone demonstrate them. From the point of view of psychology, no emotions are forbidden, and often, when working with male clients, psychotherapists normalize the manifestation of various feelings in men.

Love is more than sexual desire and is not about orientation, but about freedom from outdated attitudes about how a man should be. In fact, this is important not only for a stable psychological state, there are a number of studies in medicine that prove that men who do not hide their emotions live longer and suffer less from cardiovascular diseases. Thus, the emergence of bromance at the present time and its normalization makes the life of men not only freer and better, but also lengthens their life, ”says psychologist Sophia Goldman.

Screen bromance

The emergence of bromance as a specific conceptual genre and theme in the film and television industry is seen by researchers as reflecting "a wider acceptance of non-heteronormative relationships."

As stated in Reading the Bromance by Mike DeAngelis, the first use of the term bromance is often attributed to Skateboard magazine editor David Carney in the 1990s, but bromance began to appear regularly in the American media around 2005 with the release of Judd Apatow's film "The Forty-Year-Old Virgin".

By 2006, the term was being applied to relationships between characters on television, including Alan Shore (James Spader) and Danny Crane (William Shatner) on Boston Legal, Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) and Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard) in House M.D. (House) and Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) in Nip/Tuck. In 2008, MTV released the reality series Bromance, in which a group of men competed for the chance to become close friends with TV presenter Brody Jenner.

John Hamburg's 2009 film "Love You Man" is a bromance comedy that has reached a certain pinnacle of the genre as the film goes so far in portraying such relationships while receiving many excellent reviews. It stars Paul Rudd as Peter Klaven, who is about to marry the love of his life, but realizes he has no male friends to be best man at the wedding. He then meets Jason Segel's character, Sidney, who is friendly and a perfect complement to Peter, but their bromance begins to affect the groom's relationship with his future bride.

The title of the film comes from a series of Budweiser commercials from 1995, which showed a guy dramatically yelling "I love you, man" in various situations to get a drink. As a result, this phrase became viral.

In addition to the portrayal of homosocial relationships in film, television has offered many examples of bromantic interactions and references to "brother culture" in the US. As Diana Sargent of the University of Georgia writes in her study, perhaps the most notable of these is the emergence of the “bro code” as a theoretical guide to how to properly treat and interact with other men. The most visible manifestation on television is the fictional (though applicable to real life) "Bro Code", developed and detailed by the character Barney Stinson in the television series How I Met Your Mother. The essence of the code is precisely in bromance relationships, when "brothers" love each other, trust each other, help each other in everything.

There is probably no greater bromance in the television world than between JD (Zach Braff) and Turk (Donald Faison) on Scrubs. JD is an empathetic doctor, fully in touch with his feelings. He is not afraid to show his best friend, surgeon Turk, how much he loves him. In one of the episodes, they perform the song "Male Love", which describes their relationship.

Oriental bromance

As The Economic Times columnist Devdutt Pattanaik explains, in Indian society, unlike Western society, all affection between members of the same sex is assumed to be friendly (it cannot be sexual), and all affection between members of the opposite sex is sexy (she can't be friendly). Since men and women in India lived in different worlds due to gender segregation, contacts between members of the opposite sex were mostly sexual, for the sake of children, people often found emotional support from members of their own sex.

Therefore, Bollywood shows men hugging and dancing with each other much more often, while kissing between men and women is almost non-existent. In Western films, men and women kiss, but you hardly see men dancing with each other.

Even in the ancient Indian epic, Krishna and Arjuna, for example, called each other "sakha", or beloved friends. The heroes of Indian lore are surrounded by loving friends who often join the same families as them so that they do not have to part after marriage.

Celebrity bromances

The media calls Ben Affleck and Matt Damon "the groundbreaking bromance in Hollywood showbiz history." The actors have been friends since the age of 10, and for some time they even lived together and ran a joint household. The relationship between Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, stars of the 2009 Star Trek movie, has been described in a similar way as their on-screen characters' relationship.

The close friendship between George Clooney and Brad Pitt was once considered "George's longest bromance". Clooney's bromance was the basis for an episode of American Dad! titled "Tears of a Clooney", in which protagonist Stan Smith enters into a bromance with Clooney as part of an elaborate revenge plot.

The relationship between Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds, despite the "fake feud" that has been going on since 2009 and fans love, is indeed very often called a bromance. They first met on the set of The Wolverine when Reynolds was married to Scarlett Johansson.

The media also often uses the word "bromance" to describe two politicians who have just met and are getting along. For example, in March 2016, when President Barack Obama spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House, media headlines said they had a bromance. The bromance of Barack Obama and Joe Biden spawned many memes that appeared towards the end of the Obama presidency.

The relationship between George W. Bush and former press secretary Scott McClellan, described in McClellan's What Happened, was described by one reviewer as "a tale of debt, a failed bromance."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and Tony Abbott of Australia and their country were described as having a "conservative bromance".

Not just in humans

A study published in PNAS found a "culture of brotherhood" in dolphin society. Scientists believe that, apart from humans, dolphins are the only species known to form such complex, collaborative bromances.


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