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
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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