I’ve recently gone through a traumatic experience with my roommates…another roommate was hit by a car and we all witnessed the whole thing. The roommates are both girls (I’m a guy), and they’ve let loose with the tears from the very beginning while I haven’t felt like crying at all.
Until now. It’s been about two days since it happened and I’ve only now started to get all misty-eyed. When the accident happened, I was cussing up a blue streak–I think every other word was “fuck”–but only now, while I’m alone, do I feel like letting go with the tears.
So my question is, what is the reason women let loose the tears at the drop of a hat and men do only after a long time has passed? I don’t think it’s a hormone thing, though it’s a factor…but I notice gay men tearing up with the same frequency as women (yes that’s a stereotype, I know, but it’s also (mostly) true).
I don’t know if it’s related to a person’s sex as much as it’s tied to one’s personality. I’ve been in situations where I have to deal with the situation at hand immediately, and I lose it afterwards. Yet in an identical situation, if someone else was there to handle whatever happened, I would probably fall apart right away.
Perhaps you were being the strong one for your friends, and it was easier to do that by channeling your feelings into anger.
Dunno - I never took a psych class - this is purely a guess based on my limited personal experience.
OMG! What a horrible, traumatic thing to happen AND to have witnessed! I do hope your roomate is alright.
I don’t really know the answer to your question - but I do agree that women are more demonstratively emotional.
(and a little sidenote: haven’t they detected an actual physical difference in the brain of homosexual individuals? Perhaps this is the control center of emotionality???)
My sister never did cry (at least around me) after my mom died. Some people don’t cry to show emotion. Some people have a built-in delay (which allows you to do constructive things before you break down like a bowl of jello). There’s no right or wrong. You just are what you are.
Because men don’t cry. It’s that simple. Wanna know what people think when they see a man in tears? They think of the sensitive guy in the movie “Bedazzled”. That is exactly why we don’t cry. We have been taught that it’s a girly thing to do.
Interesting question. I suspect it’s dependant to some degree on how boys and girls are treated when they cry as children:
Boy crying: Hey, big boys don’t cry…
Girls crying: there there sweetie, it’s ok…
[Potential sexist generalization]
I also suspect guys are also more action oriented, i.e.* “What needs to be done…”* rather than emotional support-oriented
[/Potential sexist generalization]
In my case, when my Dad passed away suddenly, I got into such a "robot"machine mode without emotions that I didn’t greive or cry for almost 2 years after. It was like I had flipped a switch, and couldn’t feel any emotion about this. Oddly enough, I could feel ordinary emotion about other stuff. Over time, it was as though the grief was in a locked room in my brain, in which I never went, for fear of what I might find…
Then one day, I was on a business trip, had a free evening and decided to see a movie. Since I dind’t know any of the movies playing, I chose “Legends of the Falls” since it had horses and cowboys, and a good cast. What happens to Anthony Hopkins in the movie was so similar to my Dad (stroke), and the character himself reminded me a lot of my Dad. I wound up driving back to my hotel barely able to see the road through the tears, and bawling like a baby on a long distance call at 11:30 pm to my (initally very perlexed, as I wasn’t very coherent) fiancee. That did prove eventually cathartic, but it was very overwhelming at the time…