Good Bye Good Friend: The Loss of Philia or We're Just Two Straight Dudes Having Dinner

 Used according to Creative Commons image by alabos life
No alterations made to this image other than resizing.

"We're just two straight dudes having dinner together" my friend sheepishly said as the waitress sat us down at our table.

It was an innocent and joking comment from my friend that in some sense was meant to be taken lightly, but at the same time meant to express to those around us that we were indeed not homosexuals on a date.  However, my friend felt the need to make this comment on more than one occasion when I have met up with him for a quick bite when I was in his area of town.

Even more recently, I grabbed a burger with a different friend who managed to convince the waitress to give him a free milkshake, and my friend jokingly asked for two straws for the free milkshake: one for him and one for her.  It took a moment for her to realize what was said because she was at first excited, then immediately disappointed: excited because she thought we were two homosexual men out on a date and she was "so proud and hopeful" for us, disappointed because we were not two homosexual men on a date.

It used to be the case that two guys could grab a bite to eat together without all sorts of preconceived notions about their sexuality based on with whom they were eating.  However, this no longer appears to be the case.  What has changed in as little as 5 years, maybe even less?  I could talk about the marriage laws and the wider acceptance of homosexual relationships, but, to me, those are just symptoms of something deeper and more serious.

The deeper issue has to do with the loss of friendship, specifically speaking with the loss of what the Greeks understood, but we don't, as philia -- one of the 3 kinds of human love that the Greeks differentiated.  The other two are storge (a familial kind of love and affection) and eros (an erotic, romantic, kind of love that is aimed at another).

There is no doubt that authentic friendship has been eroded, we can blame social media as a contributing factor, as well as the break down of the family and such, and the sexual revolution -- which is still revolting.  However, men seem to have fewer friends when contrasted to women.  What the article notes is that the only kinds of allowable friendships that men are able to have are friendships of utility (what does this person do for me -- maybe a coworker or the bartender) and a friendship of pleasure (a teammate or drinking buddy), but in no way can a man express a deep friendship, a friendship of goodness and virtue, a friendship in which a person is able to share his vulnerabilities with another because it makes each other better -- this, of course, is done in a non-romantic way.

When Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings was on the silver screen, it launched a new discussion in queer theory about the nature of Sam and Frodo's relationship (here, here).  I'm sure the queer lit theorists would be sad and disappointed to learn that Tolkien understood deep and meaningful friendship (friendships of goodness and virtue) and to learn it was a relationship modeled off the kind of relationship and devotion the batmen would have for his officer(s).  What has changed over the years where Frodo and Sam were once understood as good friends of virtue having the kind of relationship -- an emotional one --  that can only be formed in extreme circumstances between two war buddies (Shoot, I recall my dad laughing and crying over a phone call with an old war buddy. They slept back to back in the jungles of Vietnam.) to being misconstrued as one emotional embrace away from being secret lovers or at minimum cast under a cloud of homo suspicion?  Briefly stated, our views of friendship and sex and romance have changed.

As a culture, we have nearly done away with authentic friendships for men because they can be misinterpreted as homosexual friendships.  Two men express any kind of emotions towards another or seen out at dinner together and they are immediately cast into homo suspicion.  So, really what happened is that when we tossed out friendship, we were left with only two real options of human love: storge or eros.  We have a tendency to only express storge towards our own immediate family but even if men who are friends expressed the same kind of affection that they have towards family it again is easily misconstrued as being a kind of eros by the larger society.  Therefore, when we get rid of friendship all that we are left with is eros, and the default for male friendship has shifted from friend to lover, and everything then becomes about sex.

To revisit the above scenarios, the reason my friend said what he said and the waitress said what she said speaks mountains as to what our culture has done to male friendship.  If it hasn't outright killed it, it is at least gasping for life.

The problem is already there for men, but the issue is slowly creeping up on women as well.  A student in on of my classes, while discussing the three human loves, said that she felt like she was unable to give any kind of physical affection to her female friends without people thinking she was a lesbian: a long hug to a sad friend, a friendly hand squeeze of encouragement, even braiding her friend's hair, or always being seen together with her bestie and no one else.

Is their a remedy?  Yes. The remedy is found in chastity.  I will hopefully talk more about this later in another post (part 2) later down the line.