[red_admiral]

This used to be much more common, for men too. You don't have to go too far back in history to find a time when intense male friendships were not at all unusual, complete with holding hands and writing love letters to each other.

Of course, some of these were gay relationships, hiding in plain sight pretending to be socially acceptable non-sexual intense male friendships. But gays wouldn't have been able to hide that way if the concept of a socially acceptable intense male friendship hadn't existed in the first place!

Maybe the Marines and the like are the few holdouts in modern society where this really positive part of pre-modern masculinity is still alive and well.

[stcroixx]

Is it really positive in today's context though? When OP said only one spouse out of this whole group accepted these special friendships, I'm guessing that the time spent maintaining these kinds of friendships is getting in the way of marriages. If hardly any women will stay married to a guy with friendships like this, that's kind of a problem if he wants to be married.

[bumby]

Given the benefits of cultivating social circles and the risk we see in those who don't have a good social circle as they age, it's probably positive.* The "getting in the way of marriages" may be true, but only in the context of how we've changed our definition of what a marriage should be. One argument is that it's a relatively new phenomenon that we look to our marital partner to be the end-all-be-all of our social circle. There is a modern expectation that our partner is our best friend, confidant, partner in raising children, sexual companion, and everything else under the social sun. I'm not sure that's entirely healthy, especially when a marriage fails.

* side note: I don't think most of the veteran suicide that we see is how we tend to mentally internalize it as a troubled veteran returning from a fresh deployment. The average age is close to 60, meaning these are veterans who have been out for awhile. I suspect the lack of social community, particularly as they age and no longer have the typical social aspects like work to define a social circle, may be part of the issue.

[pfannkuchen]

I have read that physical affection in male friendships is paradoxically more accepted in societies where homosexuality is punished by death, simply because no one is worried they might seriously be signaling or receiving sexual interest when expressing affection towards other men.