Stop Telling Men It’s Okay To Cry

The majority of men you know have heard at some point (or many points) growing up that “real men don’t cry.” They’ve heard it often enough that the majority of men we know don’t feel comfortable showing their emotions through crying whether they’re depressed, joyful, or shocked. Men, for the most part, were taught to hold in their emotions, remaining stoic in the face of life’s challenges.

Obviously, the idea that an entire class of people isn’t allowed to cry – that crying is weak, ought to always be controlled, and only ever for women – is not healthy. Men should feel free to shed a tear when their bride walks down the aisle, or when they experience a tragic loss, or when a film moves them. They should feel secure enough in their masculinity that crying after their childhood dog dies won’t make them question whether or not they’re a “real” man.

Within the last few years, it’s become common for women to speak against this expectation placed upon men. They’ve called attention to the fact that it’s simply human to cry, and processing our emotions sometimes involves tearing up. 

But what started as a movement that sought to allow men the privilege of shedding a tear has quickly morphed into something else: a pressure to cry. Whether through personal conversations, tweets, or opinion pieces, the idea that while men often don’t cry, they should, has become much more prominent. And while we might say that this is a step in the right direction, here’s why this new movement is going too far.

The Difference Between Men and Women

We’ve all heard of, and perhaps seen, the “It’s Not About The Nail” video, where a woman complains to her husband about feeling pressure in her head. Cut to a wide shot, where we see that she has a huge nail sticking out of her forehead. Her husband kindly says, “Yeah, well, you do have a nail sticking out of your head.” Her response? “It’s not about the nail.”

This silly, short video expresses a truth about how men and women often approach their issues: Whereas men will generally talk through an issue, almost as if from an outsider’s perspective, and quickly explore potential solutions, women will generally first desire emotional openness and seek empathy. Solutions aren’t quite as important to us when we’re still sifting through our feelings. Speaking from personal experience, I mostly need a place to vent when opening up about an issue. Eventually, I’ll start thinking about solutions, but first, I just need to talk and be understood.

Men and women go about their emotions, struggles, and solutions differently.

Neither approach is inherently wrong, but instead, they simply highlight a core difference between the majority of men and women. We go about our emotions, struggles, and solutions differently.

We’re Controlling the Way Men Handle Their Emotions

Personal anecdote: Recently, at a small women’s gathering, we all started talking about the men in our lives. Multiple women in the group expressed annoyance that their boyfriend/husband never cried: “Men really just need to learn how to cry. It’s not healthy not to. I wish he’d just let it all out like I do with him.”

We’ve gone from telling men that they’re allowed to cry (which is true) to telling them that they should cry – and if they don’t, they’re suppressing their truth, stuffing their emotions, and promoting toxic masculinity. If they don’t process hardships the exact same way we do, in a manner we deem acceptable, then they’re unhealthy. But is this perspective actually helpful to the much-needed conversation about men’s mental health?

Let Men Process Emotions in Their Own Way

When most women say men need to learn how to cry, they’re trying to open up a conversation about men’s mental health – which is notoriously ignored. They’re attempting to shed light on the fact that women aren’t the only ones who have emotions, and men shouldn’t be ashamed to feel. Their way of achieving this is by pressuring men to fit into the mold of what they think, from a woman’s perspective, the processing of strong emotions is supposed to look like.

Obviously, men deal with mental health struggles and difficult emotions – they wouldn’t make up nearly 80% of suicides otherwise. But telling men how they ought to process their emotions isn’t the way to make them more comfortable with confronting them. Making them feel as though there are rules and regulations around how feelings should be expressed is unfair, unrealistic, and controlling.

Telling men how they ought to process their emotions isn’t the way to make them more comfortable with confronting them.

Just as a woman would rightfully take offense at a man instructing her to handle her emotions without crying, men can feel at a loss when women demand that they cry – like in order for their feelings to be taken seriously, they have to learn how to express them in another language.

How To Emotionally Support a Man

All of this to say, men do have emotions and do need their wife’s/girlfriend’s support, just not in the way we’re used to offering that for our female friends. So, how do we go about emotionally supporting a man?

• Be careful of making assumptions. He might seem like he’s got it together, but right underneath the surface, he might be struggling. Make a habit of asking him questions about what’s on his mind.

• Study him. Know when he’s in a mood to talk and when he isn’t. Start taking note of his actions throughout the day, figuring out how he behaves when he has something he wants to talk about.

• Don’t expect him to respond how you would. He might need time to think through what he’s feeling, or take more time to put his feelings into words, or choose to express himself in a way you wouldn’t. Leave your expectations for how talking about emotions should look at the door.

• Be someone whom he can trust with his feelings. Try to remain empathetic and understanding throughout his sharing. Something he says might cause you to feel insecure, lost, or upset, but try to be there for him no matter what.

• Be willing to own up to your wrongdoings. He might have a bone to pick with you. Just as you would hope he’d be open to constructive criticism and own his faults, do the same for him.

Closing Thoughts

Men should be allowed to cry, but they shouldn’t be pressured to. For us, as women, to offer men emotional support, we have to allow them to process their emotions how they wish to, not how we think they should.

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