1) Why are you close to your Friend? Be specific

“The reason i am close to my friend is because we are similar. We have been friends since we were 3 years old. We first met in kindergarten and have been friends ever since. i feel like the reason we get along together so well is because we naturally click. For example this friendship is never forced and most importantly he is someone who i can say anything to and not be judge. Now that we are are older we don’t see each other as often as we used to but it doesn’t affect our relationship as we still talk on social media and we play sports together.”

2) What kinds of things do you like to do together

“The things we like to do together are playing sports and playing online. The sports we like to play together are basketball, soccer and hockey. Although i am not very good at hockey it is still a sport i enjoy playing because its a sport my friend enjoys playing. When playing online we play ps4 together almost everyday and it keeps us in contact together as well as having fun together. The games we play together are fortnite, nba 2k20 and ufc sports.”

3) Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you? If so, what did you say and how did he react? If you have never told him how much he means to you, why not?

” No I haven’t told him how much he means to me because i guess it never crossed my head. I guess its because he knows how important he is to me because we have been friends for a long long long time.”

The person I interviewed for this blog post is my boyfriend. I asked him these three specific questions and this was his response:

Me- Why are you close to your friend?

Boyfriend- I’m close to my friend because he’s not just my friend he’s my best friend. He’s like a brother to me. We like to do the same things on our free time such as playing basketball and playing video games. Our families grew up together which made us feel like brothers. We are always at each others houses. We also went to the same school which made us bond together. We like the same stuff when it comes to food, hobbies, etc. We tell each other everything even our darkest secretes without judging one another.

Me- What kind of things do you like to do together?

Boyfriend- My Best friend and I like to play basketball together on a daily basis without getting tired of it. We like to spend family quality time with our families. We love spending time with our girlfriends as much as we can. We like to go over to one another’s house to play video games such as 2k and fortnite.

Me- Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you? What did you say and how did he react?

Boyfriend- Yes I’ve told him how much he means to me not just because he’s a best friend to me but hes actually a brother to me since I am the only child. When I told him he said it right back to me he wasn’t shocked or anything because we felt the same way. I remember we were playing video games at my house when i said it and after he said it back we hugged it out and then got back to the game.

• Why are you so close?
• “Iv’e been friends with him it’s been 11 years. He’s probably the only person that I can genuinely trust because he feels that way too. We think alike, we both are motivated and driven. We both have huge ambitions in life and constantly motivate each other. We both have almost the same mentality and vision on life and everything really, which makes us pretty identical but at the same time we are very different which makes our friendship so diverse. We both want the success of one another. We value each-other so much and treat each other like brothers. Every time I go to his house I feel like home. He is the only person that I can turn my back on and not worry what’s going on behind me. He is a very unique person, if you talk with him you’ll realize that he is not like anybody else, he doesn’t think the same way as general people would, in a good way. He’s a life friend, I’d even certainly consider him as a real brother. I want to see him shine in life.”

• What kinds of things do you like to do together?
• “Anything. There isn’t a specific thing or event that we get together to do. We do anything that we feel like doing honestly. We mostly hang out with other friends too, we both are crazy about cars and have a couple of friends that have cars so we meet up together then go out to eat and drive around the city. We also go the gym together after school. Besides that he casually comes to my house and we go out someplace with other friends.”

• Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you? If so, what did you say and how did he react? If you have never told him how much he means to you, why not?
• “Yes I have told him. At this point, we’ve known each other for a decade and I feel comfortable expressing myself in front of him. It doesn’t even feel like something hard to express it just comes natural to me. When I told him that, he wasn’t surprised at all nor shocked because the feeling is mutual and we both know it, to the point where if he were to answer these questions, I know that they would be somewhat identical.”

Analysis

When I interviewed this person about his friend, I could sense that he was somewhat excited to talk about his friend which was a clear sign to me that he genuinely liked and appreciated his friend and looked at him as a brother, as he stated in the interview. Kilmartin points out that men get uncomfortable when the discussion is about emotion, but this male had no problem whatsoever expressing his honest feeling about his friend because he regarded him as a loyal brother instead of a guy that he plays video game with on the weekends. They actually spend time together living their lives and motivate each other, they wish to see the growth of one another and that for me is a real friendship. The interviewee showed so much strong emotions in his answers that completely go against the traditional idea of how a man to man relationship is.

• What kinds of things do you like to do together?
• The things we do the most together would be sports like basketball or football, ps4 and eat.

• Why are you close to your friends?
• Because he’s a loyal friend since day one. We meet through basketball. We play together every Friday and started to go eat after, that’s how we became friends.

• Have you ever told your friend how much he meant to you? If no, why not?
• No, never. I just know that he knows he means a lot to me. The closest things to express my feeling would be like “I feel you bro” or “I fuck with you”

•  Did ever have a deep conversation about your feeling with your friend? How did you feel after that?
• Yes, 2 or 3 times. “relief” is the only world that I have to tell you have I felt.

• Why don’t you have those kinds of conversations more often?
• I don’t know, it felt awkward like it’s more difficult to have those kinds of conversations with a guy that a girl. Also, I feel like if I talk about what bothers me too often he would that I’m too sensitive.

• Why would girls be easier to talk to?
• Like girls are more empathetic than my guy friend. I feel like she would understand me more than the guy.

 In “ No men is an island: Men is relationships” by Christoper Kilmartin, he stated that “the most important attributes of a close or best male were knowing that he would be there for you, stand up for you,”. For the interview, my friend said that loyalty is the reason why he and his best friend are close. A male-male relationship has a lot of competitive behaviour. The reason why he gives that answer is that he feels like if he tells his best friend his weakness, he uses wouldn’t use it against him.

Also, at some point in the text, “ No man is an island: Men is relationships”, Kilmartin mentions how men get uncomfortable when it comes to talking about their feeling to other men. The three last answers that my friend has proved the point perfectly. he tries to minimal deep conversations, he would have with this best friend even though he felt relief after talking to him just because he felt awkward to share his feeling with his friend.    

INTERVIEW 

Me: Why are you close to your friend?

Him: Well, we meet in secondary 3 in French class and started talking about how we were going to fail this class because of the teacher’s high demands. And ya it started off with that conversation and later on we became good friends. We relate to lots of things like we love playing video games, eating pizza, and playing basketball. So ya, as we continued to hangout, we became very close, we open up to each other about most things basically. 

Me: What kinds of things do you like to do together?

Him: like I said we love playing video games and stuff. Actually, since last summer we enjoy going out in downtown to eat. 

Me: Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you? 

Him: I don’t think I ever told him “I love you” but when it’s his birthday I do express by love to him. He’s my best friend, I am happy when I am with him and trust him always. 

Me: How did he react when you talked about your love towards him on his birthday? 

Him: Well, he said thank you and told me that he loves me too and considers me part of his family. And in my culture, when somebody say “we consider you part of my family” that means that there is no going back. Meaning even in conflict, you have to love that person unconditionally.

END

ANALYZING 

The person I interviewed answered the questions with lots of emotions. They didn’t portray their friend as only a buddy. Like a person that you only hangout with to play video games or sports. He talked about his friend like as if they were already brothers. The fact the he showed his love towards his friend, totally scratch the stereotypical picture of a male-male relationship. They have an emotional intimacy. They not only talk about sports but also talk about their hopes and dreams without being ashamed. And that right there is the REAL definition of best friends.

1. Why are you so close with your friend?

He is very close his friend because they understand each other. They know about each other a lot. His friend is always here for him when he needs his help and support. He knows what makes him mad and happy. His friend is more of a brother than a friend

2. What kinds of things you like to do with each other?

They like to chill around, drive, eat outside and play videogames.

3. Have you ever told your friend how much he means to you? If so, what did you say and how did he react? If you have never told him how much he means to you, why not?

He does tell him how much he means to him on special occasions like his birthday. He also said that he’s like a brother to me, someone I’d never want to lose and always be close with him.

In a short interview that I conducted with a man about friendship, he revealed some things about homosocial male friendships that I, as a woman, would not be privy to. He told me that he and his friends pretty much only spend time together through online games like League Of Legends where they fight a common enemy and accomplish tasks side by side. In Kilmartin’s definition of relationships found in No Man is An Island: Men in Relationships, the kind of companionship he speaks of would be more attributed to the term “buddy” because these men only share an activity and do not show any level of emotional vulnerability or support.

In fact, my interviewee even went as far as to say that if someone were to even attempt to open up/be heartfelt to him or in the group setting, it would be uncharacteristic to their dynamic and would make people uncomfortable. A direct quote from him in this interview: “talking about your feelings in ANY conversation is a mood-killer”. What most conversations revolved around banter and playful slights at each other (other than pleasantries, small talk and the task at hand). The latter of these things serves as a type of competition, to establish a hierarchy of sorts since, according to Kilmartin, male conversations typically involve them taking turns at sharing a monologue with the group, the next person trying to one-up the last person and thus, effectively demonstrating dominance over the others.

In the documentary “The Mask You Live In”, we see many aspects about how a ‘man’ should act and how he shouldn’t. In this documentary, there were a lot of boys who spoke about their experiences and talk about how they can’t act a certain way, like showing emotions or talking to friends about personal problems, and they talk about how bad it is for them.

The first point that got my attention in the documentary was how boys nowadays can’t follow their dreams because they’re pressured into doing something else as what they want to do is not ‘manly’. For example, arts can sometimes be considered to not be manly and someone who is interested and is talented at this could just lose it all to do something that makes him feel like he belongs, so peer and social pressure plays a big role in this.

Another point that they said in the documentary was that the way of parenting plays a big role in how the son turns out. If the parents are very supportive and show the son that he can always talk to them about whatever he wants to talk about, the boy will be more comfortable talking about his problems. But if he was raised with the attitude of ‘be a man’ or ‘don’t cry’, and also that showing emotions is not manly, then the boy will be very closed in his own problems and will not feel comfortable talking about it to anyone, as his own parents judged him about it.

When boys do have problems going on in their life and do not have someone to talk about, they usually turn to drugs and drinking, and sometimes even violence. And when they can’t take it no more, they start contemplating suicide.

The part from Carlos Gomez’s book where he says “Masculinity is a choke chain. It is a suffocating bar that will never be met” really stands out because what he is saying is true, that no one will ever be the toughest, the most brave, the most powerful and the most ‘manly’. And from when we are younger, we are always taught to be tough and strong and not to fear anything to become men, but it is very tiring as there is always someone who is stronger than you. And either way, physical strength is NOT what makes someone a man.

By saying that institutions accomplish the creation of gender. Kimmel is referring to the way we’ve organized society and in this case work or school environments to favour old time gender roles. If there is a stay at home parent present in the home it is often more beneficial for it to the the woman just because of how society is arranged.

What Kimmel means by the plural “masculinities” are both the cultural differences associated with the ideal man, and also the differences in different time periods. For example a white middle class man in the 50’s would have a different idea of what it means to be “a man” than a young boy in todays day and age. But both examples are still affected by the social pressure and unfair constrictions of what we’ve excepted as being a “man”. By saying “Masculinities” we are understanding and including certain discrepancies within the meaning.