You love me. You love me the way men can love each other and still have wives and children and connecting pools.
—
Burton Guster to his best friend,
Shawn Spencer,
Psych
A trope as old as time itself. Two extremely close friends or partners, of the same gender, who are as close or closer than a romantic couple. They aren't romantically linked, but they might suffer withdrawals from not being around each other. There might even be a "break-up" episode. When one gets a boy/girl friend, you can almost certainly expect the
Friend Versus Lover quarrel to be epic. Note that despite the trope name, the characters in question are
not necessarily both heterosexual.
Sometimes this is an extreme form of an
Odd Couple, in that the two are different as night and day.
Those Two Guys may also acquire this label, as may the title characters of
any show with a title of the form
X and Y. Don't expect them to be friendly to each other though, quite a few are
Vitriolic Best Buds. In adventure stories, they are often
Blood Brothers. The pair may be
Mistaken for Gay by those around them.
Works often lampshade, mock or play with the relationship by throwing in some
Homoerotic Subtext, but that's by no means necessary. For fans' delight at such scenes or
ship teases, see
Ho Yay. Be careful though -
Heterosexual Life-Partners who are often
Mistaken for Gay can carry
Unfortunate Implications, commonly referred to as "
queerbaiting".
If the two friends are opposite sexes, they're
Platonic Life Partners, perhaps
Like Brother and Sister. When an entire group are life partners, they're
True Companions. Compare also
Chastity Couple, whose relationship
is romantic but not sexual.
Examples
Discussion