There's No Touchy-Feely in the Bromance

Mark Leonard has played on a softball team with the same pals since 1978. And when he and his teammates get together, "our conversations deal with the doing of things rather than the feeling of things," Leonard says. His experience mirrors what researchers say about gender differences in friendship: "Women's friendships are face to face: They talk, cry together, share secrets. Men's friendships are side by side: We play golf. We go to football games," Jeffrey Zaslow writes in the Wall Street Journal.

But it's a mistake to think the lack of feelings talk makes men's friendships less deep or genuine, Zaslow says. Though they may not be emotionally expressive, men still draw a lot of support from their friendships, and many prefer to open up to their wives or female friends or family members about emotional issues. (More friendship stories.)