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It was Barack Obama and Joe Biden who made clear to the world that the bromance was here to stay.
The rise of this intimate mode of friendship between heterosexual men is epitomised by the former US president and his second-in-command, pictures of whom walking together, talking together, sharing easy jokes and loving glances, became a much-loved feature of the Obama era.
Biden marked his commander-in-chief's 55th birthday last year by posting a photo of matching homemade friendship bracelets, a gesture reciprocated when Obama later surprised Biden with a non-homemade presidential medal of freedom.
It cemented the fact that the 'bromance', as theirs was quickly dubbed, had permeated the very highest echelons of international politics. (Only this week the New York Times reported that Donald Trump's "bromance" with Xi Jinping was doomed.)
Today, bromances are not just for the George Clooneys and Brad Pitts of the world: diplomacy itself is conducted in bromantic argot.
Now the scientific community has delved into the world of bromance.
A new study published this week in the journal Sex Roles has concluded that the rise of such relationships could actually have positive implications for men's health.
After interviewing 30 heterosexual male students about their same-sex relationships, researchers at the University of Winchester defined a bromance as being more physically and emotionally intimate and based on a greater sense of trust compared to an ordinary friendship, allowing men to be emotionally vulnerable with one another.
The researchers theorised that the rise of the bromance signalled a shift in cultural expectations of men as tough and stoic, which could have positive implications for masculinity and men's health.
The study is wrong: bromance spells disaster for men
But it is clear that the researchers have failed to consider the terrible toll this fad will take on legions of men who have worked hard over many years to develop their repressed, emotionally moribund side.
This new world of bromance is going to expose us to all kinds of anxieties we've just never had to deal with before.
What's more, the pressures and terrors of bromance threaten the very idea of manhood, and spell disaster for men everywhere.
After all, being emotionally unavailable has worked for us for centuries; we were able to get so much done because we didn't waste time having feelings.
We were also happy — insofar as any man is capable of happiness — because without the confusion and angst of outwardly-expressed emotions, we never had to worry about whether we were feeling good or bad or worse than we should be.
In particular, we didn't have to worry about other men's feelings, because as far as we knew they didn't have any.
Indeed, the study presents dangerous and potentially disastrous aspects of the bromance as innocent and even beneficial — like "the ability to be emotionally vulnerable with another man".
We all know that this leads to only one thing: telling that man how you feel. And that leads to that man knowing how you feel. And how can you possibly go on from there?
Once another man knows how you feel, you might as well just leave the country.
There's a time and a place for physical intimacy
Then there's "physical intimacy" which, according to the researchers, is another key component of a bromance.
It's bad enough dealing with the overwhelming sense of inadequacy that comes with physical intimacy with one's romantic partner.
But if I have to start engaging in cuddle sessions with all my male friends, I'm going to be a nervous wreck.
What if my cuddle technique is off? What if I squeeze too tight? Or not tight enough? What if after I cuddle with one bro he thinks I'm cuddling him exclusively, but I'd like to cuddle other people?
What if he laughs at my pathetic cuddling with his other bros?
No, it's too big a minefield. There is a time and a place for physical intimacy, and it is called a scrum.
It's also dishonest to laud the benefits of bromance without admitting that a bromance turned sour can be a nightmare.
It's not just the obvious practical risks, like being forced to share your chips, or getting so involved in debriefing over last night's Great British Bake Off that you forget to keep an eye on the barbecue and burn the house down.
History's most famous bromantic failures
There are subtler dangers hiding in bromance: the sleep deprivation that comes from staying up all night after calling a friend "just to chat"; the embarrassment of going in for a manly hug, only to get caught smelling your bro's hair; and the inevitable chronic back problems that accompany attempts to bond through shopping.
You can scoff, but wait until it's your turn to host the guys at the monthly cheese and charades night.
You'll soon be yearning for those carefree days when you could spend eight hours straight with a friend watching motor racing and never even exchange a complete sentence.
And if you still need convincing that the rise of the bromance signals the decline of men, history contains myriad examples of its inadvisability.
For example, Napoleon's refusal to indulge in bromance allowed him to conquer Europe.
On the other hand, Byron and Shelley threw themselves recklessly into the bromantic lifestyle, and one of them drowned because he'd been too busy bromancing to learn to swim, while the other was rendered so timorous by bromance that he let his doctors bleed him to death.
The Obama-Biden bromance itself, so adored by the bromance-loving sheeple, led directly to the Trump administration, so the evidence is clear: bromance causes disaster.
If the rise of the bromance causes us to abandon our cherished repression then it will all be for nothing. All those years of hiding our true selves behind a steely mask of false machismo and artificial stoicism: wasted.
Is that what you want, men? Do you want your stiff upper lip to droop, your hard-won lifestyle of stone-faced internal stagnation to be cast to the four winds?
Don't let it happen. Say no to bromance.
Topics: popular-culture, emotions, men, relationships, social-sciences, united-states