This was a timely read for me. I've been really missing my friends back in Michigan of late. I went out last night with some chums here in NC, and they're great guys but nothing beats the friends you've had since you were young.

My wife is always quick to point out that thing that guys do but women don't. It's generally referred to as "ribbing". When you go back and forth one-uping the other in either insult or some other form of humor on a topic.

I read this and longed for evenings around a table with a bottle of scotch talking about politics, religion, music etc with my good guy friends. It's such a great time. He captured the essence of this really well imo. It's competitive but at the same time you're rooting for the other guy because you want the game of conversation to continue to elevate. Most women don't communicate this way, there isn't the competition and I tend to get myself in trouble when I try to communicate this way with my wife. What I see as a way to elevate a conversation, she may see as aggression or even as an insult. Men like insults, it provides an opportunity to hurl one right back. The punch/hug thing is certainly true. I have only punched 3 people in the face in my life and 2 of them were best friends. The next day, both of us hung over and battered... "hey man, sorry" and then life continues unchanged, except now we have a great story about that time we got in a fist fight. Guy friends, the good ones, are like brothers. It is a special thing.

Is there a specific reason this feeling is evoked in men in relation to one another as opposed to in relation to women? Let's even drop sex from the equation - what if you have a man and a woman who have 0 sexual chemistry, or a homosexual man (or woman) who is friends with a woman (or man) - does the mere lack of a Y chromosome preclude this kind of buddy-buddying? Is there no room for personality? And perhaps most importantly, is this something biological, sociological, or something in between?

What of transexual/transgendered individuals? A great many people would agree that gender is not a binary but is, instead, a spectrum in which everyone's identity falls. What implications does this have? I'd be interested to know how this author might relate to a good buddy of a decade or two who comes out as identifying as a woman - would he be there for his mate? Or does she lose that 'mate' status for being a woman?

It's a nice feel-good piece for men looking for an explanation as to why they treat one another differently than women with some pop-psychology, but I don't think that having good female friends with whom you have that kind of bond is an edge case anymore. The existence of people who do not fit the clear gender binary also deeply complicates this issue of "men just be men, yo." I don't wholly disagree that there is a different kind of bond in the majority of situations. Where I disagree is to simply accept that it is a part of us on any fundamental level - I'd like to understand why we are how we are.

Funny timing- my wife and I were just talking the other night about whether romantic love and amicable love are the same thing. Article seems to touch on that subject exactly.

I don't happen to agree with the author, but that might be for one of a million reasons having nothing to do with the true nature of love. Ultimately, I suspect that views on the matter simply differ from person to person (although it's less clear that even if views on a matter differ individually, that necessarily means the thing itself is mutable or subjective).

My wife and I eventually decided that very little actually separates the notion of romantic love from friendly love. The differences could be chalked up to: a) the addition of sexual attraction, which doesn't so much alter the baseline quality of love but modifies the way we consider it; and b) the crucible of long-term shared living space and hardship, which colors the way we approach our loved ones.

In regards to a), it can be noted that sexual attraction might scuttle our perceptions of the two iterations of love in the first place, since you might initially let sexual attraction obscure your view of the person behind it until later in a relationship, when you might realize the two of you have nothing in common. And then, rather than concluding that you made an initial error in judgement or logic, you assume that romantic relationships don't pan out the way your friendly ones do because there's something different about romantic love. Does this mean that romantic and friendly love are actually different? No, it just means that you're more likely to pick a friend while unencumbered by considerations of appearance or genetic gain. If you're lucky, you'll either initially pick a partner due to appearance and only later come to really appreciate how compatible that partner is with you on a personal level, or else, better yet, pick a long term sexual partner despite appearance and because of personal compatibility. A lot of westerners, though, for the grand majority of their romantic life, they lock eyes across the room, decide to give it a go, and later realize that picking a viable life partner by the color of their plumage is about as effective as picking a best friend based solely on the state of their teeth.

In regards to b): I come at this from the perspective of somebody who lived in close quarters with his best friend for a couple of years, and who can attest, more than he cares to, to the fact that any good friendship can turn into a series of backbiting/recriminatory interactions characteristic of a 20-year marriage with the introduction of enough environmental stressors. I've actually come to believe now that you don't truly love somebody until you can get really really mad at them and not be afraid to show it. Anyhow, the difference at this point between my best friend and my wife is that I no longer have to live with my best friend, and I've never wanted to make out with/bone him. Besides that, I value both individuals at about the same level. I guess the best way to put it is, although the basic ingredients of each relationship differ (I share more cultural similarities with my best friend and our main passions align more often; the way my wife and I react to hardship is in better alignment), the overall product of each relationship amounts to the same thing (I appreciate each of them equally on a holistic level). Sexual attraction is this funny little widget that's been added onto the relationship with my wife, but it's more of a separate entity than a fundamental mutation to love. And eventually, when we're old and nasty and can no longer procreate and have to live with each other exclusively as people, I suspect my hypothesis will bear out.

I might be incredibly lucky in this, and to that effect shouldn't be allowed to project my status as an "ought" onto every other romantic relationship. It is, in fact, incredibly obnoxious to do so (sorry). On the other hand, maybe my circumstances allow me to more easily compare the two different kinds of love. I can give my wife shit (and take shit from her), I can laugh at things with her, I can argue with her and still come out of it okay. I can do the same with my best friend, although I no longer have to argue with him as much since we live across the country. These baseline interactions, when I subtract the gender dynamics that invariably muddy our perception of the thing, are fundamentally the same. This is not something I think I'd be able to come at objectively if I was in a different kind of long-term romantic relationship, or never had any kind of long term romantic relationship, or didn't constantly obsess over the true nature of things just as a kind of experiment in anxiety-fueled philosophical wankery.

Anyhow, to sum up: fun article to read, although I disagree wholeheartedly with the notion that just because the author's romantic and platonic interactions differ, the fundamental nature of romantic and platonic love are separate and unequal. Sounds like the author has a pretty fun life though, huh?

EDIT: I do, however, miss hanging out with my best friends. I think that's more a product of having almost no good friends in my current area and having to spend all of my quality time with one best friend rather than diluting it via interactions with multiple good friends. Variety is the spice of life.

Eager to read this. I had the pleasure of meeting the writer, Andrew O'Hagan, briefly for afternoon drinks during a course taught by then-artist-in-residence at my college, Irvine Welsh. He brought in O'Hagan and Alan Warner, the novelist behind what became one of my favorite films and books, Morvern Callar (adapted in 2002 by Lynne Ramsay). O'Hagan read to us from this touching contemplation on the personal costs of war: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3638417/We-.... He's a brilliant writer, and in a past life he toured with the Wedding Present, and so I'd really like to be his friend, if only to cue up his stories and wit at will.

It's an under-served topic, not only in fiction and in columns such as this one (appears to be). An example from pop culture that comes to mind is the stark difference between the male cast of characters in Parks & Recreation vs. that of The Office. Male friendship is given exponentially more screen time in the former whereas in the latter the only 'pals' on display were the misfits, and they only appeared to engage in friendship out of a dearth of other options.

It's simple, I know, but I can't help but be touched by the sincere language used by the writers in certain exchanges between male characters on Parks & Rec if only because it's so rare elsewhere. If someone pitches you an idea for a story about two guys who just "go away for a while," you either come up with crime or Brokeback Mountain - rarely does something like Old Joy register in the pop consciousness, but that's exactly what I think we need, more of that. More depth, and more understanding, of what it is that makes dudes (of a certain context, to complete the joke) tick.

On the other hand, I deeply regret having written all that on International Women's Day.

I couldn't read this, as a man it made me want to puke copiously just seeing the picture and reading the first line. Really, what is the point of analysing and (ugh) eulogising the concept of friendship? It really seems incredibly vain and nauseatingly self-congratulating.