Can gay and straight men be true friends?

Joe, I hate to say it, but you come across as a complete heterophobe.

How would you feel if you heard a straight man saying things like "oh I could never be friends with a gay guy, they're too feminine and they make me feel uncomfortable. They're nothing like us straights, they should stick their own kind, and we should stick to our own kind."

Your attitude is perpetuating this barrier between gay men and straight men, when there are many straight men out there who are totally fine with gay guys and are happy for us that we are expressing and exploring our sexualities without giving into the fear that we will be discriminated against. You are giving into the fear. Living in fear that a straight guy will turn against you if he sees you with a boyfriend. I find your way of thinking much more worrisome than how straight men will react to seeing me with a another gay guy.

Please open up your mind and get some fucking life experience.

 

I've done that several times.

I'm just not entirely sure where you're getting these assumptions. You clearly haven't had much experience in romantic life. I would just be far less focused on discovering prescriptive rules that govern social behaviour and actually just see what living life leads to. You'll probably get more knowledge that way anyway, as well as finding out you can make friendships you might preclude yourself from touching.

 

Personally I’ve enjoyed havving the gay friends I have had down through the years. They always seem to have a witty personality and are fun to hang out with.

 

I couldn't do that either. There are a lot of those men who do that but have other social interests you through which you might befriend them. There are also a lot of men who are straight and fairly traditionally masculine who do not conform to the pattern you identify as typically masculine behaviour, which I'd note is fairly limited to Anglo, working class, white men.

I'm just not sure what you're trying to get out of this process. Every time a way for you to befriend people is suggested, you dismiss its possibility or utility.

 

I get that you're worried about making new friends when you go to uni. And I'm guessing you're worried about homophobia from straight guys, or discovering they're homophobic after they seemed nice at first, based on your experiences with your dad and the shool rugby team. Sure, when I was at school there was a lot of casual homophobia thrown around. At university there was far less, and I had the option of avoiding people I didn't like!

I loved being able to make gay friends since leaving school, or even on forums ... it's great. That said, a good bit of general advice to making friends is that common interests do bring people together. So a club or society based around something you like doing ... is great, right? And some of those people might be straight guys whom you get along with, and who aren't jackasses. One of my best friends is a cishet guy I keep in touch with from uni, and he's one of the kindest, sweetest people ever.

I personally don't think you're a 'heterophobe' - this is an LGBTQ forum, if you can't vent your grievances here, where can you? That said, when you're out and about in the 'real world', good advice (which I'd tell *anyone*, not just you) is to not make too many snap assumptions about new people. A straight guy won't necessarily be a 'blokeish' (do you mean 'homophobic'?) guy, or like football or beer, any more than a gay guy will necessarily be into fashion. Some are, some aren't, the best way to find out is to keep an open mind! And of course, there's nothing wrong with anyone liking football, beer or fashion.
Thanks for reading this. Hope it was clear, I tend to ramble on here.

 

I've actually done this a lot myself. The thing is, Joe, you just come off as really immature. Now that's alright given that you're like 14 right? You also seem to have unusually limited life experience--again, that's alright given your age. But you seem to feel that you've got it all figured out based on that very limited life experience--which comes off as really immature. Hopefully as you gain a little more experience you'll see that the world's a big place full of all sorts of people and you'll be able to sit back and enjoy the ride a bit. It's a great ride and, in my experience, part of what makes it a great ride is that it's an unpredictable ride.

 

Let me put it this way;

Same reason why straight men and straight woman can’t be friends.

 

I fail to see how sexuality would preclude anyone from being friends with anyone else. I have met people of various sexualities and consider them my friends but I only closely interact with one person who identifies as bi. That's it. Everyone else I know is straight. If I limited myself in who I could be friends with based on sexuality I'd have no friends. So yes, of course straight guys can be friends with gay guys.

 

This is just a myth. There are plenty of people who are straight and friends with the opposite sex.

 

For some reason, I thought you were 18, not 16, and you'd mentioned university so I had the idea you were about to go - the clubs I was thinking were university clubs/societies. Since you're not about to go to uni, and 2 years is a long time to wait anyway, I'd add further things to what I said:

- Yeah, right now things feel crap and you want to have different kinds of friends, particularly ones who accept you. That's normal. I had tough times making friends in school. It sucks, but school does end eventually, in the meantime -

- The internet is big and scary, but also wonderful. I was scared of it when I was your age, but that was ages ago, and ... here you are, so you're clearly not scared to chat to people online. What kind of virtual interaction can you have that's satisfying as well? Do you like blogging? Twitter?

- What kinds of interests (besides sex) do you have that could bring you to other people? Blogging, dancing, going to museums ... again, this may seem generic, but it's all good.

 

Also, having not met your friend, he sounds awfully insecure, or just awful. Not all straight guys are.

And I used the word 'heterophobe' cos someone else said it to you earlier and I was like 'what'? But it doesn't sound like you minded, which is good.

To everyone else: a gay guy and a straight guy can be friends, as can two gay guys, or a straight guy and straight girl. Different kinds of friendship exist.

 

And then one of them ends up falling in love with the other and then ends up getting their feelings hurt. I’ve seen this happen between gay guys and straight girls. This does not end well.