I agree that homophobia plays very little into why men drift from boyhood or even young adult male friends.
I have/had adult friends that only the word that covers it is “brotherhood.” We were the best of friends and very close. We were all straight and tightly bonded to one another. If someone called us gay, we simply played it up or laughed that off. We were anything but gay. We were secure in our friendships and sexuality. Calling us gay would more often get howls of laughter than some desire to shed the men around us off so as not to be seen as homosexual.
However as each of us became serious with a woman and especially when kids came along. Each man focused on the mundane of life and shouldered the responsibilities of family and marriage. We held on for awhile but once the final tie of shared activities was cut, we all drifted away from one another. Some moved for jobs and family, others were hurt that the wife/gf took too much time in the others lives and simply went off to find other friends. Certainly most of us still talk on occasion and see each other about once or twice a year. But we have drifted and will likely continue to do so because priorities shift, time is short, and people change.
Studying boyhood is good and many things are built into us over those years. However to ignore the effects of testosterone and girls on boys and their choices is to be blindly ignorant to a huge effect on men. And to extrapolate the loss of boyhood friends to that of adult men’s loneliness is quite a stretch for most people. Boys friendships are precious, but have little to do with any “Man Box” or anything of the sort.
