Rise of the bromance is bad for women, could become ‘genuine lifestyle relationship’: study
‘What happens if these bromantic relationships really take off… Women actually just become the sexual fulfillers of men and nothing else. That’s the worrying aspect’
A key theme of the bromance for men, researchers found, was the freedom to express themselves without judgment, and to engage in emotional intimacy without fear.
Joseph Brean
October 12, 2017
6:01 AM EDT
The rise of the intimate “bromance” as a new form of friendship has liberated young men from the stifling bigotries of homophobia, but it imperils young women who are increasingly regarded as little more than targets of sexual attraction, according to new sociological research.
The bromance may not be the progressive expression of enlightened masculinity, as it is sometimes described and portrayed in movies, said Adam White of the University of Bedfordshire in Britain.
Rather, it may be a regressive development, with especially worrying results for women. His research, based on interviews with male undergraduate students, concluded that men saw their female romantic partners as judgmental, and as “the primary regulators of their behaviour.” This led to a generalized disdain for women, and a view of romance in which men feel they are “constantly posturing and self-monitoring, not only to achieve desired heterosexual sex, but to prevent relationship destruction.”
A key theme of the bromance, on the other hand, was the freedom to express themselves without judgment, and to engage in emotional intimacy without fear.
The rise of the bromance “is very, very good for men,” White said. It offers young men the opportunity for, as the research found, “elevated emotional stability, enhanced emotional disclosure, social fulfilment and better conflict resolution, compared to the emotional lives they shared with girlfriends.”
Beyond the need for sex, we found that for this cohort of men, bromances performed a very similar, and often superior function to romances. Getty Images
“But it’s not necessarily benefiting women, and in fact it may well be disadvantaging them,” White said.
The new paper, in the journal Men and Masculinities, even suggests the bromance could become a widely accepted domestic arrangement. With sex so freely available without emotional attachments, through social media for example, and because bromances occupy such a privileged spot in young men’s lives, “the bromance could increasingly become recognized as a genuine lifestyle relationship; whereby two heterosexual men can live together and experience all the benefits of a traditional heterosexual relationship,” according to co-authors White, Stefan Robinson and Eric Anderson, of the universities of Winchester and Bedfordshire in the U.K.
“What happens in 50 years, say, if these bromantic relationships really take off and men decide, ‘Hang on, we really enjoy these. These are much better. We can gain more emotionality from it. We’re less regulated, we’re