Bromances Are Killing Heterosexual Relationships
(NYPost) — Bromances are more emotionally satisfying and rewarding for men than romances with women — a not-so-brotastic development for the future of heterosexual relationships, a study published Thursday found. “The increasingly intimate, emotive and trusting nature of bromances offers young men a new social space for emotional disclosure,” the researchers wrote in the study, published in the journal “Men and Masculinites” according to Pacific Standard magazine. Researchers at the University of Winchester in the UK interviewed 30 straight undergraduate men, who said they felt less judged by their bros, and that it was easier to open up and resolve conflicts with their male friends than with their girlfriends. “On balance, they argued that bromantic relationships were more satisfying in their emotional intimacy, compared to heterosexual romances,” researchers wrote. “There are significant and worrying results here for women. These men perceived women to be the primary regulators of their behavior, and this caused disdain for them as a whole in some instances,” one of the researchers, Dr. Stefan Robinson said.
Are we the first generation to realize this or are we just the first one to be open about it? No shit our relationships with our friends are more emotionally satisfying and rewarding than the ones with our girlfriends. No shit we trust our friends more and are more comfortable around them. I’ve never been comfortable around a girlfriend in my entire life. I’ve never sat there thinking, you are welcome here and are in the trust tree and can be honest and can just be your true self. Every moment around your girlfriend is the ultimate stress test. Don’t say that thing you were thinking because it might make her mad, don’t fart, don’t allow things that are outside of your control to upset her, it’s a goddamn torture chamber. Every second I’m hanging out with my girlfriend I’m trying to act normal while also calming the puppy inside my head that’s jumping and yapping, “SAY THIS THING! DO THIS THING! GO DRINK THAT BEER! LET’S DO SOMETHING FUNNNNNN!!!!!!!!”
With you friends? You can let that inner puppy out. Let him roam free around the lands of honesty and forthrightness. Because guess what? That puppy doesn’t want a treat when you’re around your friends. He doesn’t want to be rewarded with sex for being a good boy. Around our girlfriends we need him to be well-behaved and trained so he can get a pat on the head (talkin’ sex), around your friends he’s off the leash and happy as can be.
But as great as that freedom is, it’s also why I strongly disagree with the whole premise of this massive study of 30 dudes. The fact that bromances exist isn’t killing relationships and the fact that we see women as the primary regulators of our behavior shouldn’t be worrying for them. They are the primary regulators of our behavior, and we need that. Without women we’d be those puppies who don’t bother learning how to live by themselves, without women we’d be toddlers left alone just treating ourselves like shit and unable to sustain life for longer than a few weeks. That regulatory nature of our relationship is necessary for our survival. The bromance is our vacation: it’s a lot of fun, but if you stayed on vacation for your whole life your whole life wouldn’t last very long.
PS – Hey Aaron, stop sleeping in beds with your dude friends. I’m not gonna pretend I’ve never been drunk at 4 AM, looking for a place to sleep after a party, and crawled into bed with a buddy, but you’re making it seem like you guys cozy up there and watch movies and eat ice cream stone sober. That’s a bit much.
“We hug when we meet, and we sleep in the same bed when we have sleepovers. Everyone knows it, and nobody is bothered by it because they do it as well,” one man, named “Aaron” in the study said.