Sensitive Guy™ checking in. I’ll say it’s okay for a guy to cry, but I don’t actually want anyone seeing me cry. The cases I cry:
Low Level: The right kind of movie will do it for me. If I am in public, or around other people in these cases, although I don’t see anything “wrong” with it, I will try my damndest to suppress or hide it — because it’s just a movie, for God’s sake!
Medium Level: Heartache, breakups. There have been cases when people I’ve truly loved didn’t love me. That can hurt.
Extreme Level: Just once: my 15 yr.-old nephew died of leukemia. He was such a great kid and so full of life. To see him lying in a casket — dead — the injustice that he had so much life ahead of him, hit harder than anything I’ve ever felt before. I never cried so hard. The force of it literally shook my body.
“It implies weakness in men, but not so much in women.” I think that statement is a social construct. Ultimately, the more a human being is in touch with their emotions, the more likely sorrow will trigger crying.
I cry. I’ve posted about it. I had a few months about a year ago where it was very easy for me to cry, but that was precipitated by some heavy stuff; moved very away from home, Darrell Green and Patrick Ewing retired, found a box of animal crackers (I know that last one doesn’t look like it fits, but I’ll explain if anyone wants. It’s a long blinkin’ story). MASH eps were hard to watch not only because of the intense nature of the show but because it reminded me of too many other things. I was very close to tears a few months ago when I saw a photo of a gay wedding (the grooms were holding their baby daughters). Goes without saying that I cried a number of times, and not softly, after Cristi died. Cried after watching “The Butterfly Effect”.
For those who say it’s unmanly to cry … well, the alternative is for me to block, and that isn’t safe for anyone. Plus if I block, things tend to come out more forcefully later on, as TruePisces and a few others witness two years ago in a hallway in an apartment building in NYC. Cried for a half-hour easy. Cried for longer on the night Patrick Ewing’s jersey was retired. Cried like a baby first time I drove back to NOVA after visiting fizzy. Cried the second time too. Almost cried (didn’t want her crying on the plane, so I blocked it) when she left for Portland for a week this past December.
I see it as an expression of emotions, a release, a cleansing … I don’t see it as a weakness, but then acknowledging your feelings isn’t something I see as a non-strength. I can cry in public. I can cry in front of my friends. I can cry in a Toys R Us (animal crackers). I can certainly cry in a movie theater. I’m not ashamed, and I see no reason to be:)
'twas a Wild Ass Guess. But I don’t understand why you would dismiss this as a factor when you can’t understand what goes on inside a man’s head–what emotions/impulses are being masked as opposed to simply no felt.
My personal experience has been that crying is just not an appropriate response for certain stimuli like physical discomfort or as an accompaniment to anger (on the level of unreasonable bosses). By inappropriate, I mean it would seem as alien to cry at a time like that as it would be to think about lime Jell-o. That stuff does make women cry, and I have no clue why, but women are strange and I just let them be. It seems a workable hypothesis to me because I can find no other explanation for a lack of desire for tears unless I am completely without hope of…well…it all boils down to “being useful.”
One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be a lot more emotional, and a lot more likely to cry, when I’m tired. When I haven’t slept well for a few days it seems like almost anything can get me to mist up a little. When I’m well rested, the same movie, book, or other emotional experience won’t have that same effect on me. When I’m tired, it’s almost as if any emotional experience has a physical effect on me. I can actually feel my stomach tightening, the throat closing, and the tear ducts beginning to work. When well-rested: nothing.
Does anyone else experience this? I know my son does. Anytime he starts crying at every little thing, we know he hasn’t been getting enough sleep.
I had to teach myself not to cry in order to avoid being teased as a teenager. That wasn’t easy. Since transition, I’ve found that I cry far more readily than I used to. I’ve actually cried while reading books or watching TV, something I never did before I transitioned. Now, how much of this can be attributed to the breakdown of the psychic barriers I built for myself when I was a kid, and how much is the fault of my changing hormone load, is hard to say. I transitioned only a few months after I started hormones, so the separation in time between the events is too small to really blame this change on either one in particular.
My first reaction when I read the admissions in this thread of bottling it up were, “Geez, how repressed – I cry all the time”. (I’m a male, 44 years old). Then I realized, while I cry freely in some settings, I rarely cry when anyone else is present, especially is there’s any kind of conflict.
For instance, four years ago, when I got the call that my mother had died, I was in a meeting at work. I thanked the secretary, and told my boss that I would need to take some time off, ‘to help with the arrangements’. He was like, “Oh, my gosh, certainly, take all the time you need”. Several people asked me if I was OK, and I was like, ‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you for your concern’. Joe Friday through and through.
But then I got into my car and the second I pulled out of the parking lot, I started bawling like a baby.
Settings where I will cry more freely include listening to (or performing) sad music, movies where you’re supposed to cry, and any of the above when I’m alone.
I think that men are more conditioned to at least control their crying than women, but there is still some variation among us.
Bullshit, it’s “hormonal” and men don’t cry because of “genetics.”
I’m sorry, but I HATE this line of argument, it’s such a copout.
Did you know that in Victorian times men cried as much as women? It was socially acceptable. It was in one of those things my English professors talked about, I’ll try to get a few cites to back this up. Men were well known for crying then, especially when broken-hearted. They would spray a letter with drops of perfumed water and write on the bottom that they were saddened from whatever…and it wasn’t uncommon to see a man break down in public.
Saying it’s genetics is SEXISM. And saying it’s hormonal is fifty times worse, because YOU KNOW that saying women are hormonally imbalanced is saying they are weak and emotional and halfway crazy.
It’s a social thing, and the acceptability of men’s tears has varied over time.
My husband cries a lot more than me. I’ve only seen my mother cry twice, and once was during her father’s funeral. I’ve seen my dad cry twice, too, so that’s equal.
I have never, never, never, never, never understood why a normal human expression of emotion is a sign of weakness for either sex. For goodness sake, this is what separates us from the machines! Besides, when someone goes “postal”, do we say “Aw, that’s just a sign of weakness”? Should we just hold it all in until we explode?
If a person, esp. a man, buys roses for his SO, is that a sign of weakness? Are we to say “real men” have no emotions? Are we supposed to sit back and let society dictate this without question and examination? The truth is REAL, STOUT-HEARTED MEN are big, brave, and bold enough to be human beings. For are we Mankind or Vulcans? Are we made of flesh and blood, or stone and ice?
And, if a man can’t understand this, then he cannot understand the essence of what it really means to be a MAN.
Along with why society cannot understand crying, I should have mentioned that this is because there is a root flaw in the design of the human being. The flaw is that “compassion” is not hard-wired into us. It must be modeled in the home or by some mentor. Rarely, it can be induced by a negative influence when an abused child, for example, says to him/herself “I won’t be that way when I grow up”. But, more times than not, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
It’s a real shame that “compassion” is not as natural and instinctive as, say, the knee-jerk reflex. I’d trade that reflex for a “compassion reflex” in people any day.
Masculine cryer here, only slightly ashamed. I cannot control it, any attempted supression follows shortly with violent sobs and torrential crocodile tears. Reasons vary, but deep emotion is always the catalyst. Some occurences just have a profound meaning and go straight to the heart. I have cried in relief, in joy, in sadness, in misery, and in anger and frustration.
I once caused some obvious horror and consternation in a random woman driver at a stop light. I was next to her at the light sitting at the wheel bawling my eyes out and in obvious distress (A song, a stupid song, was the cause.). I looked at her and she paled and turned away in transparent discomfort and horror. She did stay neck in neck with me after the light and occasionally glanced over at me with some worry. Women seem to have strange reactions to men crying. Some despise it and consider it weak. Some relate with compassion. Men just get really uncomfortable in the prescence of another man crying.
This is so true. My wife is from Brazil, which has a very “manly”, “machismo” culture, but it is not something to be ashamed of when a man cries. You can even see men crying in public. Also, Brazilians seem to be a lot more comfortable with touching between men. You can see real “macho”, “manly” men hugging and walking hand in hand down the street.
We recently had visitors from Brazil (not from my wife’s family, but good friends) and the usual greeting at the door between men was a really hard long hug, and while talking there would be embraces, hands on the leg, things like that.
It seems people in Brazil (both men and women) are a lot less embarassed to show emotion (be it anger, joy, sadness), and they can really show emotion when they need to. Just watch any Brazilian Novela (their version of soap operas) to see how it is considered normal to show strong emotions instead of internalizing and repressing everything and keeping a stiff upper lip. From my Italian and Spanish colleagues I get the general feeling that the same thing applies to them.
Yes, I was teased for crying when I was a teen but I had long since decided that I would not let my ‘peers’ change who I was. After all, they thought I was too smart.
I cry at movies. I cry reading books. I cry listening to music. I cry when people die.
If you don’t think I’m manly enough, guess what? I don’t care. I’m don’t have any need to show you I’m a man or to obtain a manly certificate from you or anybody else.
It don’t think less of people when they cry.
I just have one question: Does acting like an asshole to me somehow make you feel better?
You can feel any which way you want about it, but crying in no way makes anyone pathetic. I personally feel that bottling up your emotions is a sign of emotional immaturity. So, my admonition to grow up was just that: A request for you to join the rest of us in adulthood.
I’m pleased to see you’re one of only a handful of men in here that feels the way you do. It takes guts to admit you’re in the minority.
I have to guess that it is at least somewhat hormonal. I don’t mean that every time a woman cries it is because of hormones or that it should be dismissed even if it is, but I have to say that before I got pregnant, I wasn’t much of a crier at all. Certainly not at movies or things like that. Now I get misty from commercials, stories, sometimes for no good reason at all. Once in a while I just feel like I need to cry, and I don’t even know why. So I do believe that at least some forms of crying are brought on by hormones. Not all, there is a difference between crying over a commercial and crying because my dog died, and I can tell the difference even while I cry. That could explain part of the disparity. Social structures I’m sure have a role as well, as some have pointed out the differences among cultural backgrounds and ethnicities.
I guess I’m saying I don’t think there is one right answer. One thing I have noticed from my own experiences (I work with a company that is 90% male) is that men do indeed express emotion, but in different ways. I see men getting extremely angry or feeling threatened by things I would shrug at. I would guess that men are just as bewildered at things I cry about as I am at things they get angry or feel threatened about. It’s just a different way of processing things. Yet no one says I don’t express my emotions when I don’t get angry about something. I just…don’t feel that way. My guess is that men sometimes (or usually) just don’t feel like crying.
My Mom was ill for a long time and when she passed, there was a certain amount of relief involved. I cried a bit in the hospital, and choked up more while giving her eulogy.
When my cat died, I had to bundle her up, take her to the vet, and hold her while she was given a lethal injection… all the while seeing the look in her eyes that she trusted me implicitly to be doing the right thing. Cry city.
Crying makes me feel more frustrated and hopeless, so instead of being a release, it just makes me feel worse.
violet9: I’m not certain how to explain why I cried when having the dog put to sleep and didn’t cry when my mother passed away. I’ll try.
Closest I can come is that the little dog depended on me for everything, and trusted me to come through for her. My mother and I were both adults at the time of her passing, and weren’t dependent on each other.
My sister and I had to sign papers allowing the doctors to “pull the plug” on Mom, but that wasn’t as bad as it may seem. Mom had left a Living Will instructing that life support measures not be continued, so we knew we were doing what she would have wanted done. In that case, though it was far from pleasant, I felt like I was being a good son by helping Mom’s last wishes to be carried out.
The dog, of course, couldn’t understand all that and just wanted to go back home. Even though she was nearly blind, totally deaf and in increasing pain she still had the instinctive will to live that animals possess.
In each case I was doing the kind and humane thing, but I think it was the dog’s total trust of me and her lack of understanding that caused it to hurt more.
Though logic doesn’t support these feelings, to me it felt like I came through for Mom but failed to come through for my dog. Thus the tears in the parking lot at the Vet’s office.
While I did cry when my mother died, I cried more when my cat died.
I felt ashamed, until I realized that:
It happened just a few months after she died;
It had been her cat, and was one of the last things I could talk about with her as her Alzheimer’s progressed;
The cat’s death was very sudden: his appetite dropped off for a few days, and when I took him to the vet, they said he was terminal. In contrast, Mom’s health had been slowly declining for a long time, and we knew that at 83, it just a matter of time.
When I went to say goodbye to him, I held him in my arms, and he looked me in the eyes and started making funny noises. I realized he was trying to purr, but was too weak. Of course I broke down.
I am guy who is a non cryer. I don’t remeber ever actually being told men don’t cry, or admonished for it, but I come from stoic people I guess, because crying really never enters my thought process. I semi hijacked last weeks survivor thread onto this subject. I just don’t understand why people break down into tears most of the time.
And I’ll honestly admit that I do think a bit less of people who cry in public. Women as well, I guess theres a sexist lesser standard for women, but a chick who doesn’t cry is still better than one who does. I don’t think it’s a macho show off thing, but more of a sense of practicality thing from my generations of peasant roots. Someone who breaks down and cries in public is letting themselves lose control of their facilities, which is a bad thing in my mind. If you cut your finger off are you going to cry, or calmly spring into action to get to the hospital to try to save the finger.
And when I say I think less of them , I don’t mean I make fun of them or call them names. It’s simply that I keep a list in my head of people who can be counted on, even in an emergency. And someone who lets themself break down, rather than remaning in control, loses a few ‘can be counted on’ points, and falls down the list a bit.