Dr. Webutante: The World Needs More Men Who Can Cry

One of the more interesting things I saw online this week was the revelation that George Bush has shed bucket loads of tears since coming to the White House in 2001.

"I've got God's shoulder to cry on. And I cry a lot," Bush is quoted as saying in Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush which was released to U.S. bookstores Thursday and written by Robert Draper. "I do a lot of crying in this job. I'll bet I've shed more tears than you can count, as president. I'll shed some tomorrow."

Good for him. I don't know why I'm not surprised to read this about Bush. And yes, I mean that as a compliment. Somehow, I don't think Dick Cheney with his heart problems is in the same criers league as Bush.

But it got me to thinking, especially about about men and crying. Women, we all know, reserve the right to cry almost anywhere, anytime for any reason or no reason at all. We seem to have that market cornered!

But men? Shedding tears has been taboo for decades in private but especially in public. (Think disgraced Ed Muskie, Presidential candidate, 1972, who was laughed out of the race for crying during a campaign speech.) But it wasn't always so throughout history.

Before going on, let me show my hand at the outset with this important disclaimer: I am not a therapist or counsellor---praise God! What I've come to believe and know about crying in general, and men and crying in particular is from courses I've taken and barely passed in Life Experience 101-201, Emotional Upheaval 301, Missing, Catching and Releasing Fish and Men 401, We're Not Always One Big Happy Family 501, and Doing the Right Thing Is Often Much Harder Than Doing the Easy Thing 701......you get the drift.

Having said that, I now want to say men who can and do cry on occasion are prone to be much healthier---mentally, physically, emotionally---than their stoic counterparts who cannot or will not cry for any reason. These men move through life able to forgive themselves and others more freely and seem to get less stuck. Men who cry as a rule get caught in less hubris.

I would go so far as to say there should be carbon offsets for men who can and do cry.

I believe not having this emotional release as a coping mechanism in today's manic world can cause chronic depression, ennui, low energy, and often stuckness in various areas of a man's life. Not to mention heart attacks, high blood pressure and various immune deficiencies. My own dear father, a truly Godly man whom I adored, told me for years after his wife, my dear mother died at 51 of cancer, that he was so heartbroken he could/would never cry again. Though he went on to re-marry and ostensibly have a very good, loving and successful marriage and life, he battled depression on and off until the day he died. I sometimes encouraged him to grieve but he simply couldn't do it. In a sense, his grief became frozen and was never was allowed to pass through and out of him. What was meant to be an acute painful emotional crisis became, through lack of grieving, a chronic, long-term emotional reality.

I've known all kinds of men, and the ones who maintain the ability to have a good, healthy cry are the ones I prefer today. They don't have to cry in front of me to prove anything; I'm not one of these women who needs a man to jump through a sensitivity hoop for me to like them. Still it's nice to know they can be touched deeply by life, its poignancy, the suffering of others and even joy and a sense of relief.

In my humble experience, men who can weep also tend to have the best senses of humor and energy levels. And why shouldn't they? They're partaking in the greatest de-stressor and anti-depressant for heart, body and soul anywhere on the market today. Tears are priceless. And completely outside government regulation and hospital bills!

It's like taking a pill that neutralizes, clarifies, grounds, humanizes and detoxes all in one. Doesn't matter if tears are triggered by sad movies, concerts, mistakes and regretful behavior, taking a stand that is right but painful, or tragic circumstances going on all around us all the time, all tears are potentially healing, growthful and important for men, and women too, in my opinion.

How and where a man accesses his grief and need to cry is an individual thing and his own business as far as I'm concerned.

I remember going to New York from Nashville years ago to visit a man I was seeing at the time. He had a spectacular weekend planned for us which included one of his favorite venues of entertainment: OPERA at the MET. We were seated front row, center.

Being from Music City and all, I had grown up around another kind of opera: the Grand Ole Opry, and, and being the sophisticate that I of course was, I wasn't too hot on it either. So when confronted with the OPERA, I tried to be a good sport and went mainly to be with him. During the last scenes of the performance---you know, the part where everyone is lying on the stage crying and dying like beached whales---my companion began to sob. And sob. And sob.

For my part, I found this death scene ridiculous and was quietly biting my tongue to keep from snickering, since of course I didn't have a lot of emotional investment in the characters. To my great horror, after he broke out sobbing, I looked around and half the audience at the Met was sobbing too with handkerchiefs in hand and tears rolling through eyeliner, makeup, opera glasses, into lipstick, shirts and ties. Sniffling, snorting and outright bellowing had broken out all around me.

I was momentarily incredulous at this mass of blubbering adults. But quickly got hold of myself and tried against all cultural odds to feign a more somber demeanor for the rest of the climatic tragedy going on only a few feet on the stage. I was clearly out of my emotional catharsis milieu.
Music, sure, can make me cry, but coming unhinged in French, no, Italian, just wasn't going to get it for me. But, it sure did for the man next to me.

I later learned that opera was designed to be a cultural group catharsis for anyone who wanted to use it as such. It isn't, wasn't and never will be mine; however, the older I get the better idea I think it is. Today, I can laugh at myself about it and when I occasionally chat with the man, I still tease him about our night at the Met when everyone, including he, was crying albeit moi, a world-class crier at other times and places.

So for my money, men who cry are more healthy than those who can't and won't. It sometimes makes them more attractive to women. It almost certainly never detracts from being masculine, real men.

In closing, I defer to a quote from the above link from our history books:

"Through most of history, tearlessness has not been the standard of manliness."
For instance, when Roland, the most famous warrior of medieval France died, 20,000 other knights wept so profusely they fainted and fell from their horses. Long before that, the Greek warrior Odysseus cried in almost every chapter of Homer's Iliad while St. Francis of Assisi was said to have been blinded by weeping. Later, in the 16th century, sobbing openly at a play, opera or symphony was considered appropriately sensitive for men and women alike."

Perhaps we're coming back to a more reasonable view of men and tears.

And in the words of one of my favorite men, Bob, who does all the landscape maintenance of the condominium complex I live in and who is 100% man and the salt of the earth:

"Look here, if God hadn't wanted us to cry he wouldn't have given us tears and tear ducts. I cry all the time and you can quote me on that."

Thanks, Bob, I think I will. And thanks for sharing!

This one's for you, Bob, George, Luther and all the guys who aren't ashamed to let it rip every now and then whether I ever know about it or not. In my opinion, the world needs more men like you.