That’s not a denial – that’s how you deal with it. As a gross generaalization, we men are taught to work through emotional upsets. As a matter of fact, that’s the classic “guy thing.”
Believe it or not, some people get a hundred times more emotional release from cleaning the bathroom than crying.
I can’t remember crying at anywhere except funerals since I was very young (am 41 now). Just like my dad. I think it has a lot to do with being logic-based. Men tend to internalize sadness. Doesn’t mean they don’t feel as much. They don’t show it.
It also doesn’t mean that men deal with their emotions less effectively. Just means that many men just don’t cry as often as a release. Good place for this topic, because it really is pointless.
If there is the impulse to cry, then it is good physically and emotionally to cry. Stuffing emotions can easily lead to depression which, in turn, can lead to physical illness. I have wondered if the socialization for men has lead to the suicide rate which is quadruple that of women. (MUCH socialization takes place before age 3.)
I fully appreciate that some of you deal with your emotions in other healthy ways or may not feel like crying at all. But the “lump in the throat” that the OP described is a reasonable physical signal of the need to cry.
I have little respect for anyone who quickly labels someone with a virtually meaningless tag and who thinks that his way is necessarily the “norm” or the appropriate response for everyone. So I guess we are even, astorian.
The two most important men in my life have been tender-hearted and easily moved to tears. It’s one of the things I love about them.
Yeah, this discussion reminds me of a convesation I had with my old therapist years ago:
Me: Wow, that was a great conversation with those friends. It was like eating a great meal, mentally.
Her: How did that make you feel?
Me: Umm… “good”. Were you not listening, or are you implying that my emotional reaction is invalid?
When women tell men that they’re not being emotional enough, it’s very possible that they’re bein just as one-sided and judgmental as men are when they demand that women “just grow up and stop blubbering”.
If you were addressing me, that wasn’t the point that I was trying to make. My point was that when a man feels emotional and feels the urge to cry, he probably shouldn’t stifle it.
I have had this discussion a thousand times.
I don’t, and never have claimed that I don’t, or can’t cry. I do cry. I don’t cry very much. But most importantly the difference between me, and most women whom I know is that I don’t like to cry. It doesn’t make me feel better, even afterwards. It doesn’t make me feel more sad, or less sad, relieved, or less stressed. I cry if something makes me unbearably sad. After a while, I just stop crying, and go on with life.
I know a lot of women who love to get together with friends and people close to them, and cry. They find it satisfying on all sorts of different levels. I know zero men who do that socially. I can accept that a man friend of mine might well cry over things that would not make me cry, but to deliberately involve others in order to “have a good cry” has never happened, and I would find it unusual if it did. I have had relationships with women, both lovers and friends where the woman literally cried on my shoulder. It does not make me feel badly. I can patiently wait for many hours of weeping to end. I don’t need to interrupt, or stop her. But I don’t join her, and in the case where I feel like crying, I don’t seek out someone to share it with.
When I cry I am almost always alone, except that I have learned to rely on faith that the Lord is with me. That came later in life. I have wept without being self conscious in front of others in some cases, but mostly I have been alone. With others, I simply don’t cry all that often, or all that long. I am more aligned toward problem solving than commiseration, when I deal with other people.
(Yeah, I sniff at movies, and such, that’s are different thing, really. But it ends up being the same. It doesn’t make me feel better or worse. It doesn’t make me like the movie more or less. I cry at some movies, I laugh at others, sometimes both. I don’t always even know why, in both cases.)
There are certain things that always make me cry. Little girls on their first bicycles, or in prom dresses make me cry. I know why, and I don’t need to avoid it, but I also don’t need to seek it out. I fervently wish I could change the real world reasons for that sadness, but I can’t. Sharing the sad story doesn’t help, although I Have done it hundreds of times. It’s a sad thing about my life, and it makes me cry. That’s all. And crying about it doesn’t make me feel better.
Women seem to find crying itself to be of great value to them. Fine, I can understand that, intellectually. But it is not so for me, and I know that it is not so for a lot of other men. And it certainly is not so that associating with the things that make me sad simply to make myself cry would be a good thing.
Tris
I’m 32 years old, and I very rarely cry anymore. I used to do it at the drop of a hat when I was a kid, but not much anymore. I will get the lump in the throat, or the quivery lip and tears thing going, especially when I’m upset about something. But I very rarely go all out and cry, I try to hold it back. It’s not that I think men shouldn’t cry, or that it’s unmanly. For me, I don’t feel much better afterward. Also I don’t want to be seen as not being in complete control of myself. For example, the day my daughter was born, I had about the worst case of the stomach flu that I’ve ever had. When I saw my girl for the first time, I wanted to cry so badly, but I didn’t want to draw anymore attention to myself, being so sick. It didn’t help that when my eyes started to well up, a couple of people in the delivery room ask me if I was alright, and if I wanted to sit down. No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to see how they acted if I did start sobbing. (One of the nurses ended up asking me to go home a little after she was delivered…I didn’t argue, I was so sick!)
The only time my wife has seen me cry was after my Mom died a couple of months ago. (I’ve been with her for 7 years.) It was the night before the funeral, and I was having a hard time going to sleep. I couldn’t get the thought of my Mom in her casket out of my head. My wife woke up at one point to go potty, when she came back into the room, I grabbed her, and just held her and cried for about 20 minutes. I did feel much better afterward, although I did freak her out a little.
I think it might be in your genes a little too. After Ma’s passing, I didn’t see my brother or father cry, not even at the funeral. (Even I let one small cry out then). They probably want to seem in control of themselves, just like me.
I thought I was the only one! Actually, I think that whole movie is very emotional. I’m always afraid to watch it with other people for fear I might cry.
That and Starman.
Ask my father, some time, how deeply I sobbed one day when I couldn’t cope with the loss of a dear friend of mine anymore without emotionally collapsing.
Ask fizzestothetop how dry my face was during the ceremony in which Patrick Ewing’s number was retired.
Ask her how dry my face was when I told her about the sort of people I’m related to and the horrible, horrible things they’ve done.
Ask her how dry my face was when poohpah cahlupa died.
Ask her how dry my face was the first few times I drove away from her house back to mine (a ~430 mile drive each way).
Ask her how dry my face was watching Sportscentury’s special on Johnny Unitas.
Ask her how I cry when I see that I have hurt her.
Some men think there is some shame in crying, some weakness inherent in displaying emotion in such a way. They choose to ignore their pain, to hide it, to block the pain.
I lived like that for several years. It. ate. me. alive. I became too good at blocking that pain (and I still have trouble not blocking it), and in doing so I did not live well. Eventually I had to jab a fork into my arm so I could tell if, at any given point in time, I was feeling or blocking.
I am able to cry more easily now because of several things, but among the greatest is my hunny. I don’t have to have my guard up all the time. I don’t have to be afraid of someone seeing me crying and seeing a weakness. There is none. There is strength because there, I am healed; just as the phoenix’s tears have healing powers, so too do mine, if only for myself.
I hope, caffeine_overdose, that for you too tears gain a healing power instead of a corrosive one; in burying your pain inside you, the main problem is that you quickly run out of burial plots. And in digging up the old graves you find more pain than you had buried.
When I was 9 years old, I made a conscious decision to not cry ever again. I’m 20 now, and I think I’ve cried a total of four or five times since.
That’s not to say I don’t get choked up watching a particularly poignant movie or other appropriate event. To be honest, I get teary-eyed rather often. There’ve even been times when I wanted to cry and couldn’t. It’s just not something I do.
For me, it’s not a matter of being macho or manly, just a part of who I am.