>>3972971
If that's what you really think then you really haven't felt the love of a close, personal friend. To quote C.S. Lewis: "“Those who cannot conceive of friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a friend.”

>>3963823
From Psychologytoday by Niobe Way
"Boys Friendships During Adolescence"

>At the edge of manhood when pressures to conform to gender expectations intensify (Hill & Lynch, 1983), boys speak about their male friends with abandon, referring to them as people whom they love, and as Justin says, “this thing that is deep, so deep, it’s within you, you can’t explain it.” They tell their interviewers in great detail and with tremendous affect about their best friends with whom they share their deepest secrets and without whom they
would “feel lost.” Set against a culture that perceives boys and men to be “activity oriented,” “emotionally illiterate,” and interested only in independence, these stories seem surprising. The lone cowboy, the cultural icon of masculinity in the United States, suggests that what boys want and need most are opportunities for competition and autonomy. Yet over 85% of the American boys we have interviewed throughout adolescence for the past 20 years suggest that their closest friendships — especially those during early and middle adolescence — share the plot of Love Story more than the plot of Lord of the Flies.