What’s really killing male friendship? For the Colson Center, I’m John Stonestreet with The Point.

Writing at the Medium, Mark Greene, author of the book, “Remaking Manhood,” explains the devastating consequences of a culture that discourages men from forming close, lasting friendships.

When boys are young, he writes, they express tremendous affection for one another. They openly talk of loving their best friends. But for some reason, in their teenage years, boys grow apart and stifle that affection.

It wasn’t always this way. In times past, men spoke of each other with passionate love. Think of David and Jonathan and Jesus and John. Now, boys can’t express tenderness for one another without it being thought of as sexual.

Greene attributes the change to homophobia, but he’s got it exactly backwards. Boys haven’t stopped expressing affection for each other because our culture is more disapproving of homosexuality. They’ve stopped because our culture is obsessed with it.

Fighting the epidemic of male loneliness and suicide requires a recovery of close, male friendship. Boys should be able to say, “I love you,” without it being turned into something it’s not.