I’m a 40+ year old man. I can stub my toe and not cry, I can stand on Lego and push the pain aside and bang by funny bone and remain tear free.
But, if I watch a short video that has cute kids or acts of human kindness or hell, even kids movies I start to tear up.
My wife never does. What exactly is happening and why do I start to tear up when watching these sorts of videos?
In: 10
The easiest way to explain it is you have an emotional response to the videos. Different people respond differently to emotional stimuli. While you may be experiencing tears which are normally associated with sadness the same physical reactions can be gained from happiness. Your wife, on the other hand, doesn’t have that emotional response. The same happens when listening to music. Some people get a physical response to music like goosebumps and tears. Others feel nothing when listening to music. There is no real understanding of why people react differently though.
One way it can happen is by engaging you to the point where you forget to breathe. Next time you’re about to watch one such video, remind yourself in advance to breathe normally and see if it hits you the same.
I think social expectations of masculinity have a lot to do with it. Personally I think guys that can show emotion have healthy masculinity. Before I came out of the closet I had an extremely unhealthy view of masculinity and emotion. I am not exaggerating when I tell you before I came out I didn’t cry–from pain, emotion, or any other reason–from the age of 8 until my grandmother died at the age of 18. Ten years. After I came out of the closet I let go of unhealthy preconceptions of masculinity, and today I’m like you and like my mother–I cry at [sappy Amazon commercials](https://vimeo.com/204611682), for pete’s sake!
Happy tears don’t get suppressed as readily.
As men, we’ve spent our lives learning and adapting to suppressing certain emotions to avoid showing weakness.
By the age of 40, we’re rather adept at doing so… for most things.
However, being born in the 80’s means we were also raised to not be afraid of crying, we were raised to be sensitive and in touch with our feelings etc.
Now, over the decades we’ve learned first hand that we *shouldn’t* do that, as it still has a detrimental effect on our social standing. When men cry over sadness or pain etc it **still** communicates weakness despite all our societies insistence that it doesn’t.
We’ve experienced the real consequences of opening up under certain circumstance so we continue to repress those emotions.
Happy tears on the other hand, don’t require that suppression. Its one of the only times we can get teary eyed and have it be seen as endearing instead of scary.
So basically, you’ve learned that shedding tears for that wedding video or getting misty eyed while smiling at the kids pranking their father vids won’t backfire on you the way sad tears do.
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