When I started planning what to write about for this week’s column, I had decided to investigate the interesting complex of relationships with men in fraternities. I have always been intrigued by their lifestyles, and I thought it would be even more intriguing to look into how their relationships are with people outside of their fraternity. But, when I started my research, I realized there was a different kind of relationship that was worth investigating: brotherly love.

You don’t even have to step inside of a fraternity house to realize the amount of testosterone held inside. The game rooms, the dance floors, the mess halls, the sleeping porches, the commotion; they all embody the lives of the young men who call it home.

Putting the house aside, viewing the interactions between the fraternity “brothers” is something in itself. They shed their senses of privacy to allow for the growth of brotherhood and friendship. They take care of one another and stand up for each other in almost every circumstance. They know more about one another than many friends and family members. Through the seemingly crazy things they do together, they build bonds that are a bit hard to understand from an outsider’s point of view.

Many students in fraternities do maintain relationships with people in and out of the Greek system, and many of those loved ones find their place within the fraternity lifestyle. When one of the fraternity brothers brings his significant other into his humble abode, his fellow brothers give the couple space and visitation rights. However, no matter how many significant others come to visit, the interactions within the fraternity never seem to falter.

So what is it about these relationships that makes the students so tightly knit? As an outsider merely looking in, I can only hypothesize, but this male-male love — not to be read sexually — goes beyond friendship. These men have the ability to open up their families to allow up to 90 people, many of whom they’ve never met before their college careers, into their lives.

It might just be my English-major brain analyzing this like characters within a novel, but the procedures these guys endure to become part of their fraternities are like new coming-of-age practices, making the people they go through them with huge parts of their lives. They may not even notice the extent of their brotherly relationships, but compare those bonds to ones students have with dorm roommates and classmates, and you’ll see there’s something more intense there.

People expect girls in sororities to get close quickly with the effort they put into it, but, from what I’ve seen, the guys build their closeness just as well. The seemingly unfaltering love fraternity brothers share is something to be praised. I mean, how many of us could leave mom’s comforting home to make a life for four years with the same 50 guys who have just as many needs and wants as we do? Now that’s love — brotherly love.

Reach Copy Chief Parisa Sadrzadeh at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.