If you want to make a man panic, put him in the presence of a woman who is crying. The poor guy will have no idea what to do. He will get all fidgety and embarrassed and maybe even angry and upset. Men like to be able to fix things and we don’t know how to fix a woman who is crying.
If you are a midlife man, you would do well to learn what to do when a woman is crying because when your wife hits menopause, the chances are she will cry quite a bit.
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So here is a little primer (Elizabeth has been through menopause and I’ve learned a few things.)
Crying is just crying. As far as I know it is not dangerous and it is perfectly natural, just as laughing or frowning is natural. It’s even a healthy thing to do. When a woman cries, she is not necessarily trying to manipulate you or make you pay in some way.
Women don’t always know why they are crying. This is especially true during menopause. Perhaps the physical changes, such as decreased estrogen production, trigger crying.
Women often cry when they are frustrated or angry, or maybe they are sad or having a troubled relationship with someone.
No matter how uncomfortable you feel when a woman is crying, don’t try to belittle it or make her stop just to make yourself more comfortable. It is not helpful to say “don’t cry, it’ll be all right,” “oh jeez, here comes the water works,” “you are too sensitive, you should get over it,” “it’s that time of the month again, is it?” “is that all you are crying about?” or “how can you not know what you are crying about?”
In fact, those kinds of expressions may stop the woman from crying, but you will not enjoy what comes next, including the hot tongue and cold shoulder for supper.
When a woman is crying, especially if you have come upon her crying alone, it may be just as well to leave her to it. Perhaps she is just having a good cry and doesn’t need comforting or a shoulder to cry on.
However, if she does tell you what she is crying about, it is good to show understanding. That doesn’t mean giving her a bunch of “man advice” to help rationalize the problem away. It might be better to empathize a bit: “It sounds as though Mary’s comment really hurt you,” or “I guess our financial situation is worrying you more than I realized.”
Randolph Cornelius, a professor of psychology at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, has been developing an evolutionary theory of weeping.
“My general theory of crying is, it’s about attachment,” he said in an April 2003 interview in the British newspaper The Observer.
“With women, it’s about relationship conflicts, anger or frustration. With men, it’s about loss, some kind of broken emotional bond, particularly that between fathers and sons. It speaks to the whole generation of men like myself whose fathers were deeply affected by World War II and who matured in the ’50s, when father-son relations were at their most distant.”
Just as there are “chick flicks” – films that women enjoy but men usually scoff at – there are also what Cornelius calls “male weepies” that make men cry. Some examples are Antwone Fisher, Field of Dreams, Saving Private Ryan and Braveheart. Cornelius said the ultimate male weepie would set up a father-son barrier and breach it after much struggle, only to have death or disaster intervene and slam it shut again.
If you are a man in midlife, chances are pretty good that you are moved to tears much more easily than you used to be. My friend John says even a news story about someone being rescued will set him off. Don’t worry about it. It simply means your tear ducts still work and you are perhaps a bit more emotionally open than you were before. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Bottom line: women cry for different reasons than men. It is a mechanism to release tension and that’s good. If you have a tissue, you might offer it, but you don’t have to fix anything or get it to stop. Just be with the person who is crying Ð man or woman.
Edmonton-based Noel McNaughton is a former broadcaster and rancher who lectures on farm lifestyle issues at agriculture conventions and for corporations. He can be reached at 780-432-5492, e-mail:
noel@midlife-men.com, or visit www.midlife-men.com.
