I always wondered why I never had very many close male friends. I think I found the answer in Turkey.
Culture is a funny thing. Sometimes you never notice an aspect of your own culture until you’ve experienced that of someone else. The definitions of interpersonal space are no exception. I never realized how much American men distance themselves from one another until I lived in Turkey. Our culture has constructed nearly impermeable walls among men, and these walls prevent signs of friendly affection that are totally acceptable in Turkish culture. Why?
Take a look at how the men around you deal with one another. Or, if you are a man, think about how you interact with other guys. Even the closest male friends stand a couple feet apart from one another during conversation, they tend to avoid extended amounts of eye contact, and only under rare circumstances do they touch. If an American man goes so far as to hug one of his guy friends, it must be accompanied by some affirmation of his masculinity, such as a grunt, a slap on the back or a devolution into violent wrestling holds.
In Turkey, on the other hand, men are much more physically affectionate and, I would argue, generally more intimate with one another. It is not unusual for Turkish men to embrace (without excessive backslapping), and most friends greet one another with a kiss on the cheek. Men stand closer to each other, they hold one another’s eyes, and when they walk together, it is not unusual to see them link arms or hold hands. Does this physical intimacy make them more effeminate than American men? Maybe. Does it improve the quality of their friendships? Probably.
And this type of physical affection among men is hardly confined to Turkey. I also experienced it in Syria, Egypt and Uzbekistan. Of course, Arab and Central Asian cultures have their own defining characteristics separate from those found in Turkey, but a similar phenomenon persists: Men display affection for their friends both physically and openly. A kiss on the face or a squeeze of the hand that would bring embarrassment and shame to an American man is not only permissible in these cultures, it is warmly received.
What makes American men different? Homophobia is an obvious answer. While certainly prevalent in Turkey, homosexuality is not the openly discussed and partially accepted lifestyle it is in the States. Perhaps it is this experience with a very public homosexuality that compels American men, homosexual and heterosexual alike, to regularly prove to their friends that they are not interested in a sexual relationship.
But this answer is not fully satisfactory. The lack of physical intimacy between male friends predates open homosexuality in American society. So what is it that made American men put up these walls between their friends and themselves? Why is it OK for me to touch another man’s leg during a conversation in Turkey, but not in the United States?
A simple explanation of West versus East is not good enough, because cultural standards of any kind never fit into such neat categories. Italian men are generally more physically affectionate with one another than the Chinese, or so I am told. In this way, simplistic East-West models are time and again proven ineffective for understanding world cultures. No, I want to know exactly where our unsettling aversion to physical contact with other men comes from.
Differing ideas about appropriate gender relations could provide another answer. In Turkish society specifically (although this is changing) and in Muslim societies more generally, free and open interaction between women and men?outside the parameters of immediate family?is not as readily accepted as it is in the States, or is at least less frequent. Perhaps as a result of this different gender dynamic, men turn to one another for the friendly affection denied them by the women of their cultures.
Even this suggestion is incomplete, however, because cultural norms are seldom determined by one factor alone, so there must be more to the story. Moreover, why would a less prohibitive attitude toward affection between men and women in the States result in less intimacy among men? It’s not like personal affection is some fixed ratio in which one variable must decrease as the other rises. It seems to me that, if anything, physical closeness among men should have increased as the American cultural environment became more permissive.
In any case, even if I do not have an explanation for this particular cultural difference, at least I think I found the reason why I have never maintained many close and enduring friendships with other men. I crave affection. Maybe it’s my personality, or maybe it’s a basic human need that our culture does not always acknowledge, but a life without intimacy is, in my opinion, a life without meaning. And while I have found that intimacy in some American women and some Turkish men, American men often feel as unfamiliar to me as, well, foreigners.
