It goes without being said that we all have a different human experience full of different relationships and male-female dynamics. I have read a lot of articles about the infamous guy best friend and can’t help but feel that I do not relate to any of them, despite having a guy as my best friend. This is what it actually means to have a guy as your best friend.

First off, he’s not some glorified stand-in boyfriend that I parade around until I find someone better. He comes first, no matter the boy. Having a guy as my best friend means we’ve made that mistake before, and know that it will never, ever be worth it to put a significant other before each other. It means calling after the dates to fill each other in. It means him listening to me analyze every obnoxious detail, and in turn, me decoding her cryptic nuances.

It’s not him bringing me flowers and taking me out on “non” dates because we’re lonely. It’s us getting mad at each other for stupid things and forgiving each other just as quickly. It’s him telling me to take a step back when my emotions are clouding my judgment, and me telling him when to look at it from another point of view. It’s him as my wingman and me as his text constructor. It’s not some romantic, sexual tension, deep feeling harboring, pathetic friendship in which one of us ends up heartbroken. It’s spending time with each other because we are awesome human beings with no ulterior motives.

It’s protectiveness, not in the sense of “I’ll beat them up if they hurt you,” but rather, “Please be careful because I trust your judgment but it’d really hurt me to see you get hurt.” It’s knowing that if we were each other’s answers, we would not be standing idly by while we go through heartbreak after heartbreak. It’s also knowing that nothing can’t be fixed with a few phone calls and raw cookie dough.

It’s a friendship in the form of new music as well as jamming out to guilty pleasures. It’s the lack of a filter and competitiveness where it matters. I don’t worry about going for the same guy or him looking better in that dress, and he doesn’t worry about me hitting up his exes or benching more than him. However, we definitely hash it out when it comes to foosball or knowing the actual lyrics to that one song that’s really hard to understand. Like I said, competitiveness where it matters.

Most importantly, it’s reminding each other that there is nothing wrong with us when someone tries to tell us otherwise. It’s having at least one guy outside of my family I can count on not to mess with my head and emotions. It’s an extra haven when my family gets to be too much. It’s sharing each other’s pain in the most innocent of ways. It’s not the being together that helps us heal, but rather, it’s being alone together. We’re not Harry and Sally, we’re Harry and Hermione.

Cheers to my main dude, thanks for being you.