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So your housemate has written about it.

Is your housemate also your husband, like that queer State Senator from Massachusetts?

This is the equivalent of push polling: designed to normalize deviancy.

C.S. Lewis covered this in The Four Loves: It has actually become necessary in our time to rebut the theory that every firm and serious friendship is really homosexual

...

Kisses, tears and embraces are not in themselves evidence of homosexuality. The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up… all pansies? If you can believe that you can believe anything

The difference, of course, is that the examples cited were from warrior societies, where one often saw one's closest associates hacked to bits before one's eyes. This tends to create strong bonding.

Hipster squishes wearing plaid onesies while sipping hot chocolate, and asking Mommy to stay up late so they can discuss Obamacare, not so much.

Incidentally, I've watched several of Brene Brown's YouTubes.

They're intriguing, in a pop-psych, Sunday-Newspaper-Supplement kind of way. But if you think they are higher learning you're...I'll let G.K. Chesterton's Flambeau describe it for me:

"Don't you know what psychology means?" asked Flambeau with friendly surprise. "Psychology means being off your chump."

No. Housemate is not hubby. 100% platonic relationship with him. My 1st hubby, however, was also a psychologist with a similar clinical degree to that of my housemate's.

Some claim that a sports field and competition is somewhat like a warrior context, BTW.

I don't need to belabor this. I'm mostly in a fiesty mood this evening--being somewhat angry over hearing about a son's suicide attempt in the UK--son of a local friend. And--another friend in the same group wrestles with feelings of suicide every few weeks or more often.

The latter one is stubborn, arrogant, a control freak, an avoidant attachment style; resistant to following through on getting help long enough to do some good; etc. etc. etc. So, when I read the OP, I was already in a somewhat angry and combative, fiesty mood. Nevertheless, I believe I wrote true things.

Sigh.

I think you . . . short change Brene Brown's research and fact-based conclusions 100% reached from the data. I think the implications are among the most solid of any in the broad field of personal psychology and interpersonal relations.

Labeling her stuff as "pop psychology" is, imho, a very unwarranted derisive blast.

1. The research proves her points as her points are extremely actuarially derived.
2. The implications are solid and applicable in millions of lives in Western culture and actually, around the world. i.e. her findings offer great analysis as well as great prescriptions for better personal psychology and better personal relationships.

Dismissing it all as 'pop psychology' could easily rob many folks of the chance to profit extensively from her findings and conclusions.

I've read tons of psychology over 3-4 decades. My housemate has read tons more and more smack in the middle of Brene Brown's favorite topics. We both rate her stuff as among the cream of the crop in the whole field over many decades.