'Just Friends'

The Platonic Brotherhood Of Gay Men

MURRAY BARTLETT + JONATHAN GROFF + FRANKIE J. ALVAREZ = LOOKING

As an only child who’s not close to my surviving family, I count my lucky stars for the brothers, sisters, and siblings I’ve made over the years in the LGBTQ+ community.

“Chosen family” isn’t just a concept for me. It’s a lived reality.

But the relationships that make me pause, reflect, and smile the most are the platonic bonds I share with my gay brothers.

There’s something uniquely grounding about them:

• Not familial, but familiar.

• Not romantic, but reassuring.

• Not sexual, but steady.

I didn’t start coming out until I was 21, which meant I completely skipped the whole “teenage dating” phase.

Like a lot of my gay brothers, I missed an entire stage of emotional development.

While other people were learning through awkward crushes and heartbreaks, I was still learning how to hide my sexuality. So I never got the early lessons most people take for granted: how to flirt without sabotaging myself, how to trust without spiraling, how to form connections without assuming they needed to become something more.

For a long time, I didn’t know how to befriend gay men. I only knew how to develop crushes on them. And how to feel crushed when the feelings weren’t mutual. Every connection and interaction felt like it needed a direction, a label, or a future.

And I know I’m not alone in that.

A lot of gay guys grow up learning how to hide before we learn how to relate. We spend our formative years editing ourselves, managing perception, running internal risk assessments: Is this safe? Is this too much? Is this going to hurt?

By the time we come out, many of us are fluent in longing but undertrained in simple, sustainable connection. We know how to want men. We know how to desire them and idealize them. But we don’t always know how to be “just friends.” We don’t know how to stay close without needing the connection to become anything else.

When we do find intimacy, it’s often framed through romance or sex. Because that’s the script we’ve been given. App culture reinforces it. Media reinforces it. Even in our shared community, connection is often filtered through desire first and compatibility second.

Which is why platonic friendships are so often treated as the consolation prize. The “just friends” category. The place you land when chemistry fades or attraction isn’t mutual. Second best.

But here’s my reality: Several of my platonic friendships have lasted a helluva lot longer than any of my romantic relationships. Longer than most family ties. Longer than all the flings and situation-ships combined.

My brothers from other mothers have seen me through the good, the bad, and even the ugly. They’ve held my hand in hospital waiting rooms and at gravesides. They’ve shown up for birthdays, holidays, and breakdowns. They’ve shared their light when I couldn’t find my own. They’ve called me out when I was being dramatic, avoidant, or full of it. They’ve loved me without trying to fix me. Or sleep with me.

Long story short: Without my chosen brothers, I’d be a much smaller version of myself.

There’s a particular magic in friendships where attraction isn’t the main attraction. The nervous system relaxes. The performance drops. You get to exist without negotiating desire, without decoding subtext, without wondering what the endgame is.

And for gay men especially, that can be radical.

Because so many of us were taught that our primary value is how desirable we are. How hot. How young. How interesting. How useful to someone else’s fantasy.

The Platonic Brotherhood cuts through that and says, “You don’t have to be anything other than who you are.”

That kind of love is quiet. Quietly profound. And deeply healing too.

When you grow up without many models of platonic male intimacy, these friendships become a kind of re-parenting. You learn how to be vulnerable without collapsing. How to disagree without disappearing. How to show affection without sexualizing it. How to stay without running away.

You learn, slowly, that closeness doesn’t always have to lead somewhere. Sometimes closeness is the destination.

And maybe that’s the part I keep coming back to.

In a world obsessed with sex, lies, and videotape, platonic friendships offer a different approach. A slower one. A steadier one. The kind of love that doesn’t peak and crash. The kind of love that accumulates. Year after year. Filled with inside jokes, shared histories, shared love, and shared respect.

We aren’t talking fireworks. We’re talking constellations.

So when I think about my life, and the people who’ve shaped it most, it’s not just the lovers or the big dramatic chapters. It’s the men who stood beside me when nothing flashy was happening. When I was boring. When I was scared. When I was rebuilding.

My gay brothers are more than “just friends.” They’re my chosen kin. They’re the family I built in the spaces where I was finally allowed to be fully myself. They’re living proof that love doesn’t have to be romantic to be real, loud to be meaningful, or permanent in name to be permanent in impact.

We share the purest, rarest, and kindest kind of love I know. The kind that says:

“I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. Just keep being you, boo!”

Thank you for being a friend!
Clint 🌈✌️

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This morning, a former colleague and forever friend, shared he had launched his very first YouTube channel. Please join me in celebrating the start of his “creator journey” by showing him some love and his channel some likes and subscribes:

“Grounded Ascent is about building strength for the better half of your life.”

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BORN THIS WAY ON THIS DAY

• 02-12 = Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) = American lawyer and politician 🌈

• 02-12 = George Smitherman (1964- ) = Canadian politician 🌈

• 02-12 = Latrice Royale (1972- ) = American drag queen 🌈

• 02-12 = Patricia Field (1941- ) = American costume designer and stylist 🌈

• 02-12 = Philip, Prince of Eulenburg (1847-1921) = German diplomat 🌈

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MAN CRUSH OF THE DAY

MICHAEL MCDONALD

“I’ve always been an artist that has had a problem with genres, staying in the box, and being told what I had to be.”
Michael McDonald