I don’t cry very often but when I do it seems like it happens most often in the presence of music.
A friend from work died 10 years ago. It was a slow death, from leukemia. I went to the wake, and was stoic throughout all the proceedings. A few days later I brought home a bottle of wine, put on a favorite old Grateful Dead concert tape, kicked back on the couch and several minutes later burst into tears about the whole thing.
Sometimes I’ll be at a concert or even just watch one on TV and especially when it starts up and especially if it’s a great female singer I’ll just be so overwhelmed with joy or it’s just so powerful I’ll stand there sobbing and wiping away tears. I just can’t contain my emotion.
Then my twins were born.
My wife had to stay in the recovery room for a while because she had complications during labor and had to be observed. Finally she was moved to her regular room at the hospital and both girls were there - after days we were finally all together in one place by ourselves - and I was sitting there holding one of the girls and the song ‘Landslide’ by fleetwood mac came on the radio and I cried then. It was like we’re all OK.
And yeah, I was one of those guys at Return of the King that was a blubbering embarassment to manhood.
I’m a ftm trans too and when I began taking testosterone, I couldn’t cry anymore for sad stuff. It came to a real shock because:
-I knew it could happen, but I though taking T would mean I could control my tears, what I felt was like my tear ducts were blocked or something. I would try hard to cry, I would feel I had the potential for tears, but it just wouldn’t get out. It would drive me crazy.
-I was/and still am, a real softie. As a kid I could cry for anything, then I very often cried at movies for sad or happy things, I could cry thinking about my gloom future, I could cry watching some tv doc about disabled kids, even if they were doing happy things or playing, I could cry reading the last Mowgli’s story. I cried during the whole length of Spirit: Stallion of the cimmaron.
And then, about a month after starting T, all dry all the time.
It lasted about eight months and I then gradually recovered my crying ability.
Now I can cry as much as I used to.
Another male who is not a big crier here. I have only cried once or twice in the past 20 odd years (I’m in my late thirties).
I don’t remember ever being told men shouldn’t cry. It just isn’t something that happens on its own anymore. From what I remember as a kid it wasn’t something I could control, it would just happen on its own.
My wife will cry at sad movies and TV shows even if she has seen them before. I don’t think this is being manipulative, it is just the way she is put together.
On the other hand I have not really been tested. Everyone in my immediate family is still alive. Even our pet rabbits are still with us.
Oddly one of the few times I can remember misting up in the last ten years or so is while watching the movie Watership Down. There is a part where one of the main characters (Hazel) is believed to be dead and a wistful Art Garfunkel song is playing on the soundtrack. I found myself thinking about when our own rabbits inevitably die, and damned if I wasn’t choking up! Caught me by surprise.
The only other time I can remember was when our son was born and transported to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in another hospital when he was less than a day old. It suddenly hit me that this little helpless person I had barely gotten to know was in danger. Again, no actual tears, but choking up.
I’ve cried 4 times since I was 18. Once by myself, 3 in front of others. They were pretty traumatic events. Feel really embarassed about doing it in front of others. Last time I did, was in front of some coworkers. It actually made me mad that I did. I guess, you could call me somewhat emotionless. I am sensitive towards others that need it and absolutely do not think that anyone who cries, Male or female, is weak. I personally just wouldn’t like to put myself out like that. I certainly wouldn’t walk away like the fellow in supplied link did. What a F**ker he is.
The idea that “getting in touch with your emtions” requires crying is fatuous, a cliché. Understanding your emtions and crying are two different things. Learning to control one’s emotional impulses is a long and difficult process that a man goes through to become a mature grownup. But I do not believe that this is only social conditioning. Men are hardwired differently in the areas of emotions. Their brains are different, and their hormones are different.
Men are sometimes called upon to do some frightening and ugly work. Think of police officers, fire fighters, and soldiers — fields where men predominate. The ability to divorce oneself from emotion is required to get the job done sometimes, under the very kinds of circumstances where women say they are prone to cry: fright, stress, exhaustion, loss.
There is a virtue to stoicism. The ability to buck up and look at the long term and the ultimate insignifcance of whatever currently ails you. It keeps you going on where others give up. Nobody expressed it better than Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations.
[QUOTE=Walloon]
Men are sometimes called upon to do some frightening and ugly work. Think of police officers, fire fighters, and soldiers — fields where men predominate. The ability to divorce oneself from emotion is required to get the job done sometimes, under the very kinds of circumstances where women say they are prone to cry: fright, stress, exhaustion, loss."
Excuse me - but I would like to point out that throughout human history women have been called upon to do some pretty “frightening and ugly” work themselves including giving birth, midwiving (which often meant dealing with dying mothers and dying newborns) nurse the sick and dying (including their own parents and children) and preparing the dead for burial. Women also often tended the wounded and dying in war. There’s plenty of “frightening and ugly” to go around - and women have held up their end admirably over the centuries, thank you very much.
For all the admirable things that women who work as nurses, midwives, and caretakers do, they are not putting their lives on the line as police officers, fire fighters, and soldiers are. That’s quite a difference.
Male, 46. I cry much more frequently now than just a few years ago. Also think it would be nice if men were as free to cry as women without social repercussion, but I don’t think we are. And I’m afraid I’d feel more weird about men crying in the workplace than about women. When a male coworker teared up while telling me a story, it struck me partly as weird; when a female coworker did likewise I accepted it as much more natural. FWIW I think part or all of the gender difference in crying is learned.
I cried at 12 when my father died, long and hard when I found out but not much after that. When I divorced at 30 I cried softly and briefly a few times. Several years later when my grandmother who helped raise me died, I cried in deep racking sobs for some minutes. I also did this after I held our cat while our vet euthanized him for untreatable cancer.
Also I tend to get misty during some movies or similarly moving but impersonal things.
And I’ve gone through stretches where I’ll awaken sobbing in the middle of the night.
I have some personal things that I think are unusual, which have gotten me absolutely bawling for extended periods in recent years, while nobody’s around. These are things I figure aren’t part of the normal life - but who knows?
>when I am upset, if my emotions hit a certain threshold, I can hardly suppress my tears. It’s like I’ll crawl out of my skin or explode if I can’t find some immediate outlet - and to my fury, I can’t totally control it. I can hardly imagine men feeling as deeply as I without some outlet of expression.
— Hey, I like this description. I think this is just what I’m experiencing too. My guess at the moment is that people vary in how easily they will reach this place, and that men generally reach it less often, and people can learn to reach it sooner or later, and maybe that’s the only gender difference. But I certainly think when a person gets to this place, the tears come!
Lazz: Yeah, I don’t think I feel any less than I did when I was younger (and cried much more easily), it’s just that something happened with puberty and, presumably, testosterone.
Walloon: Oh seriously. I did the training to be a nurse and I doubt seriously that anything as psychologically straghtforward as risking your life to save other lives in a burning building puts you through anywhere near the emotional repertoire that caring for a bitter dying guy on a med-surg ward that you’re suppose to coax into taking the admittedly eventually-useless meds that he’s refusing to take can put you through. Draping a 250 pound smoke-asphyxiated person over your shoulder and diving through walls of blackness and fire to get them out may take lots of strength and determination, and I’m sure it’s scary as hell, but I don’t see it as something soul-tormenting, an experience designed to wrack you with terrible misery and tears. Aside from which most of us malefolks aren’t exposed to those job requirements, so I doubt that gendered experience of that nature is the key.
Now dealing with junior high and the socialization of masculinization, on the other hand, might corroborate your point. (I still think there’s something chemical going on, though)
You mean the women who work as police officers, firefighters and soldiers? Or the men?
What a very strange analogy.
Anyway, crying remains an extremely effective and natural way to release emotion, and while I do not deny the importance of keeping it together in an emergency (I don’t think anyone denied that, did they?) the real test comes in the aftermath of that trauma. Crying then is much more healthy - and honest, and bonding - than drowning one’s sorrows, or allowing them to become sentimentalised, or forming some kind of emotional block.
In Illinois, women are not allowed to be police officers and fire fighters? Well, where I live, they are. Yet less than 15% of the applicants for those positions are women, despite several decades of active recruitment of women and minorities. Fewer women are interested in those occupations than man. In my opinion, a major part of that reason is that men are more inclined to take high risks; and what allows them to take high risks is an innate stoicism. The same stoicism which finds crying useless.
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Holding those occupations doesn’t make a person stoic; a stoic person is more likely to apply for such a job.
Stories of the following things make me cry: someone dying, a pet dying, losing touch with a loved one, someone doing something beautiful for free, a life changing event (good or bad), someone with little or no love in their lives, and I’m sure there are a few missing. I also cry when I listen to music, take my hour long pace-around-the-room-and-think sessions, and one time I saw a woman so physically beautiful that I cried. No movie has ever made me cry; the only fictitious events that had any affect on me were those that I thought of myself. I’ve been fortunate in that my life hasn’t taken any turns for the worse, and no one really close to me has ever died. I don’t know how I’d handle those situations, but thinking about them is enough to get the tears going.
I cry at least three or four times a week, but only when I’m alone. In public, I’m very impassive. This may be from growing up in a very chauvinistic household, but I don’t really know. I don’t see it as a weakness in either sexes, it’s beautiful. I’m not ashamed of crying either; I consider sensitivity an important part of me, but sometimes I think it’s a bit excessive. If I cry after hearing the Oscar Mayer Wiener Song, I’ll admit myself into a hospital.
The original point was about breaking down under stress, and I can pretty much guarantee nursing doesn’t remotely compare to combat in terms of stress.
I think there’s a big social stigma attached to males crying, but I think there may be a fundamental evolutionary issue. Women seem more apt to do things that would alert other members of their social group when under stress, whereas men tend to act proactively.
I recall watching a news magazine show years ago that did a report on how much of the differences in the sexes was innate and how much was learned.
They surrounded some kids that were a few months old with a piece of plastic that surrounded them and blocked their movement, and had their parents sit across the room.
They were too young for the kids to have been socially conditioned to act certain ways, and yet there was a clear difference in how they reacted to the situation. the girls tended to scream and cry and get the attention of their parents so the parents would come help them. The boys tended to get violent, trying to push up and hit the plastic barrier, trying to be proactive and break through to their parents.
Of course, that’s not exactly an exhaustive scientific study, but I think it highlights a fundamental difference as to how men and women are hard wired to handle stress and emotion differently.
When you put a barrier between my daughter and what she wants, she first tries to figure out a way through it. When it is clear to her that there is no way through it, she then stops and cries.
Perhaps what this really proves is that girls are smarter than boys. Girls recognize when a situation is unresolvable without assistance and seek help sooner. Boys just stupidly continue to pound ineffectively against the wall.
My parents are both still alive, and three of my grandparents, but it’s just different with a pet. In fact I haven’t lost a major pet (no offense to anybody who has fish) since fifth grade, but animals are a soft spot for a lot of people and I’m one of them. Anyway I think John Carter pretty much has it right. Animals aren’t capable of understanding what’s happening around them and people usually are, and it makes you feel that much more pity in addition to the dependence thing.
Case in point: my throat is a little tight writing this post and I’m thinking about this on a purely conceptual level.
Also: anybody else here remember the movie What Dreams May Come? Robin Williams flick from '98 whose sole aim was to make people cry. Well… Robin’s kids died, no biggie. Robin dies, no biggie. He meets his dog in heaven and I lose it instantly. Perfect example of the pet effect in action.
