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It is so typical of today's navel-gazing popular culture to imagine that every observable phenomenon is of our own creation.  We don't look to the past.  Heaven forbid, we look to the nature of things.  And when we take "credit" for having invented a thing, we have to give it some nasty little spin full of psychological and sexual drama.  Take, for example, this story from the Seattle Times about so-called "Bromances."  Bromances, the author explains, are non-sexual expressions of deep affection or love between men. 

In another less sexually obsessed time, we might have called them solid friendships and few eyebrows would have been raised in observing them.  The article attempts to suggest that there is something weird or new or different in these friendships  . . . perhaps because we delay marriage . . . perhaps because of the more open acceptance of homosexuality we see all around us. 

But this is ridiculous.  Indeed, it is probably the more open acceptance of homosexuality and sex outside of marriage in general, that accounts for the author's suspicion that there is anything new in this at all.  Strong bonds of friendship between men are a normal, wonderful, and long-established part of life.  An older and a wiser time would have been able to distinguish between agape the love of friendship and eros sexual love--without any deep reflection or awkward suggestions.  But as we have lost so much of our understanding of what constitutes the erotic, so too, have we lost any genuine understanding of real friendship. 

We are all out to "get ours"--in politics, in love, in friendship and in business.  My, aren't we clever?