I’m not one to use the SDMB as my Livejournal/Face-spacey page.
But I’ve noticed a trend in myself in the least couple of years that I at first dismissed, but now am sorta of wondering about.
I’m crying more.
I’ve always had a soft spot for certain themes. I will tear up at the end of Miss Saigon and Madame Butterfly, for example. That’s nothing new; it happened when I first saw MB as a 22-year-old.
But over the past couple of years, especially this last year, it’s… weird. I always thought of myself as a typical male, not prone to tears, with the odd and perhaps endearing quirk of being moved by art.
But … I don’t know, in the last month I got a little teary watching a freakin’ music video (Cuando Mr Enamoro, Enrique Iglesias duet with Juan Luis Guerra). I got teary as I was telling my wife about the series finale of Medium; she missed it. I could give other examples if anyone thinks they’re relevant, and I don’t mean to suggest I’m bawling my eyes out on a daily basis, but the inescapable fact remains that I find myself get teary fives times more frequently, let’s say, than I would have ten years ago, with the threshold for that response much lower than it ever was.
What the hell is going on with me? Should I seek out hormone replacement therapy or a psych session with R. Lee Ermy?
I started a thread about a similar topic some months ago. I don’t cry. Crying is for babies. Yet, I’ve got a couple of soft spots that choke me up. You’re turning into a sappy old broad, just like me. Welcome to the club. We drink gin and eat Wheat Thins.
In all seriousness, it could be a mild hormonal thing. Men go through a sort of “menopause” when they get a little older. The testosterone goes down. They soften up, get a little more sentimental. It’s nothing to worry about unless you start growing breasts.
I hope we’re allowed to laugh in the crying thread! Y’all crack me up.
When I was younger, I hardly ever cried. I just didn’t feel the urge much, and if I did, you can bet nobody ever saw it.
These days, I tear up for any stupid thing, and I had a full-on bawl a couple of weeks ago. The horrible part was, I didn’t know it was coming. I felt fine, then my husband asked me a couple of questions and my damned face cracked and fell off, followed by copious amounts of salt water. This can not be allowed to continue!
It’s just an indication of your humanity. Don’t worry about it.
There’s a pernicious meme out there that showing emotion or caring about things is a Bad Thing for a man. This is utter bullshit. We have to be bullied into not showing emotion; that’s what is unnatural.
I don’t have a cite, but once read that men are likely to tear up for films but less likely (than women) to cry about real life.
My own story is that after my childhood doggy was run over I stayed dry-eyed for 18 years. The movie ET broke the dam, and now I’ll routinely cry during films or sad songs.
It’s kinda fun. Tears are nothing to cry about, ya know?
Me too. I think it’s a mid-life thing. Although I can honestly say I’ve been through more stress this year than I thought was possible for one human to bear. Still, I don’t usually cry at stress, (or at much of anything) and I actually broke down in front of my lawyer, which is just unthinkable. We were in an office environment, and both wearing suits, ferOg’ssake. I even had to switch to the waterproof mascara.
If you like Enrique Iglesias the damage is probably already done. (mmm, muy guapo)
But to be serious: have you experienced something that makes you identify more with the thing that is tearing you up? I’m pretty unsentimental, generally, and when I used to read about someone losing a pet I’d be kind of like, “gosh, how sad for them” - having a lot of sympathy but but not really feeling anything myself. After my horse died, though, all those threads started tp hit me hard in a completely new way and I would often find myself crying over them. You’re not crying over the thing you’re seeing, but over an experience the thing is reminding you of. IMHO.
I mostly notice this in myself when I’m singing. Those heart-tuggers that I used to be able to emote while performing are now choking me up for real. Danny Boy(one of the saddest goddamn songs on the planet), Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, Bui Doi, that kind of stuff. It’s putting a real crimp in my style. And I’m not even old, I’m on the south side of 35! But this used to happen to me when I was a kid and first learning those kinds of songs, so maybe I just need to recapture the discipline I used to work so hard on when I first started performing. Getting back into it after a decade or so away from the stage isn’t easy.
On Saturday I took a little nap, and I felt great. When I awoke, I felt a little sad. Then I was texting a friend and she said some things that made me feel sadder. Then I watched a romantic comedy (shut up, it had Rob Schneider in it), and the waterworks just started up. I wasn’t bawling like a baby, and I wasn’t trying to hold the tears back. In fact I was laughing at the movie quite a bit. But my eyes woudn’t stop dripping.
Even though I abhor conservative politics, I wish my fellow liberals would lay the fuck off of John Boehner. I find it downright admirable that he’s human enough to have feelings, and man enough to express them through tears from time to time, without giving a damn what people think.
I’ve noticed that my eyes tend to get watery more often during movies, specifially during certain scenes, than they used to. It’s the glare from the screen on those damned new flatscreen TVs. Yeah, that’s it. And the air in theaters these days makes my eyes water sometimes too, probably all that popcorn grease. And babies … I’m going to blame the smell.
[spoiler]Joe returns from a business trip to Hawaii, but his plane hits turbulence and goes down, all hands lost. The series flashes forward seven years. Alison has finished law school and is now a prosecutor for the DA’s office. Manuel has become the mayor. Bridget and Ariel both live on their own; with Marie a high school senior. Marie rebels at visiting her father’s grave as they do every week, saying she’s mad at him. that there was no excuse for her father not to have “visited” them after he died, since he knew of the gift they both have to communicate with the dead.
Alison is prosecuting a huge case against a Mexican drug lord when she begins to have dreams showing that Joe didn’t die – he washed up on shore in Mexico with a head injury and no memory. The local police officer is on the drug dealers’ payroll, and discovers that Joe is the husband of a women in the DA’s office, so rather than report the event, they keep him in Mexico as insurance against a day when they may need help in the DA’s office… and now that time has come, as the drug dealer hints to Alison that Joe is alive and he can deliver him in exchange for scrapping the case.
Alison drives into Mexico and finds Joe, but just as they’re reunited, she wakes up, back in the present. All of this was a dream, and Joe is standing in their bedroom. As she tries to run and hug him he sorrowfully stops her, saying that the airplane crash was real, that he did die. He sent her the dream about how things would turn out in the future to show her that things would be ok, that she and the girls could get along without him. But her love for him forced the dream into a new direction; she made the part about him being still alive in the dream happen.
She sobs and begs him not to leave, but he does.
The scene cuts to 41 years later. Alison, a great-grandmother, is slowly eating some pureed food in a nursing facility while listening to a recorded message to her from one of her great-grandaughters. A moment later, the spoon slips from her hand and she slumps lifelessly in her wheelchair… and a moment after that, she’s young again and looking in wonderment at her body, and then in joy at Joe, standing there. She says, “You waited for me!” and they kiss.
It might be the resonance of certain themes with me… I can listen to Empty Chairs with nary a tear, but when Jean Valjean sings, “On this page, I write my last confession…” I have to clench my jaw to keep my face steady… but that’s been happening to me since I saw Colm Wilkenson sing it over 20 years ago.
