Our culture doesn’t look fondly on tears, especially for grown men. “The only kind of crying you can allow yourself in front of a woman, is the James Dean kind – eyes wide open, staring into the distance, one lone tear rolling down your face” – this is what my dating coach told me more then a decade ago. I’m glad I didn’t listen.
While crying is often considered a sign of weakness, it’s actually a great way of coping – that what tears are for and that’s why they bring so much release. Consider yourself a lucky person (and especially a lucky man) if you are able to cry when things get serious.
There are two ways to cry though. You can cry with the expectation that someone or something will save you from your pain and fear. And you can cry just as an expression of what you’re feeling. If you can tap into the second type of crying, you’ll be able to deal with anything life throws at you. It won’t be as stoic as movies lead us to believe it should be, but it’s very effective – if you really let it go, it should only take a few violent minutes of crying and shaking to let all the energy out and clear your head.
It’s quite amazing that we lose touch with the healing power of tears as we grow. I suspect it’s a cultural thing, not an innate thing, which means it could change. Sharing circles and certain forms of therapy are safe places to cry in, a good romantic relationship can be that too. But I wish everyone had the courage and the permission to cry and release everything that accumulates in their hearts. I wish it was okay for soldiers to cry on the battlefield. It happens anyway, in real life, although not in movies. We shouldn’t be basing our ideals of what men (or women) should be like on the least sensitive of us. Sometimes it feels like what we consider to be sane and well adapted is actually psychopathic: fully rational with no emotional content or attachment. I would never want to be that way and lose my own empathy, sensitivity and creativity but we do need to figure out how to deal with those pesky emotions so they are a force of good and not a debilitating mental illness.
So cry my friend. Cry as much as you need to. Cry in the bathroom into a towel if whoever you live with can’t take it, but don’t try to force your tears to stop. You are an amazing, highly sensitive, deeply intuitive person. You may discover courage under that fear, and not only be able to cry yourself to freedom but to find the strength to support everyone around you in their pain and fear as well.
[I posted a rough version of this as a reply to a post on Reddit]