Well, feel free to throw them out there 

It's not a real observation, but it was nice and vivid (if short), so I figured I'd post it.  I dreamed that it was the anniversary of my bf's mom's death (she's alive irl, thankfully).  He and I were sitting around the table with some friends (he at one of the heads of the table and me around the corner next to him) and his mom briefly came up in conversation.  Our friends offered condolences, but shortly after became distracted in a different conversation.  I looked over at him and saw that he looked sad and distracted, so I reached my hand toward him.  He took it and continued holding it while we sat there, our other friends too distracted to notice anything wrong.  The two of us kept talking about his mom, and his head was bowed somewhat.  At one point, I said something nice to him, and he looked up at me and smiled.  When he did that, I noticed a couple tears running down his cheek out of the outside corner of his eye.  When I saw that, I got up and went around the table to wrap my arms around him.  Unfortunately, that's as far as my dream went, but it was really nice to see him openly show me tears, if only in a dream.

I like all kinds of sobbing noises, as well as wailing and the sounds of people talking while they're very obviously trying not to cry.  I can also see the attractiveness in smiling while crying.  Although crying out of happiness doesn't really do much for me, the idea of someone smiling to try to act less distressed than they are even though they're outright crying sounds really sweet.  I'd also like to see smiles on crying faces if I said something meaningful and comforting to put them there.

Another aspect we haven't touched on yet is the physical aspect of experiencing another person crying.  I love the idea of feeling a man's body actually trembling with emotion in my arms.  Also amazing would be the feeling of sobs going through him.  As he cried uncontrollably, his body would be racked with each sob.  I also imagine that when a guy is fighting for control and you're holding him, you might be able to feel a few little spasms where he stifles sobs, even when he hides them well enough that you couldn't hear them.  I like to imagine hugging my boyfriend when he's upset in public and feeling those little spasms and knowing he's crying, even though everyone else thinks we're just having a long hug or a cuddle session.

So, the past two times my boyfriend has teared up around me, I've noticed him do this very unique thing with his lips.  It's not the infamous lip curl (I still have yet to discover whether or not he does that when he's full-out crying), but instead, he pulls his lips into his mouth so you can't see them (see picture linked below for example).  I can tell he's doing it as a way to keep himself from actually breaking down.  I thought it might have been called 'pursed lips,' which is what I searched to get the example pic, but a slightly more thorough googling seems to indicate that pursed lips are actually quite the opposite, where you pucker them outward like when you whistle.  I was wondering if anyone knew what this is actually called, and more interestingly, whether or not you've ever seen anyone else do it to keep from crying.  If so, do you like it?  I think it's really sweet, because seeing him with his lips like this and his eyes glistening with tears, he looks so vulnerable, and it's obvious what he's feeling even if he's not letting himself cry.  

http://www.aim.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/jay-carney-pursed-lips.jpg

Last night, my boyfriend and I had a really nice conversation.  If any of you remember my previous posts, he's been dealing with depression that makes it hard for him to open up to me.  Well, the other day, he did something that upset me, and last night I finally managed to get him to talk to me about it.  He was clearly uncomfortable in the conversation, but I told him how important it is to me to talk about things that happen between us, so he willed himself to do it.  We were sitting in my car at the bottom of his driveway.  

After we finished talking about the thing that had upset me, we somehow got on the topic of early moments in our relationship.  He realized he couldn't remember very much about me asking him out (he has a bad memory).  I sat there for a good while, telling the story in as much detail as I could, and when I finished, he was speechless.  He explained that he felt really overwhelmed, both with happiness from getting to relive that period of our lives and sadness that he couldn't produce the details for himself, and I could hear him choking up.  I took his hand and held it for a few minutes (he didn't pull away like he did the other time he choked up in front of me, when someone else was also present) and brushed at his hair with my other hand.  After a minute, I said "come here" and we hugged.  I left my arm partway around him and continued to hold his hand, while he alternated between silent thought and speaking while struggling not to cry.  We talked over his feelings for a while like this, until he said he was exhausted and ready to go in.  He hugged me goodnight and I said, "come here" again and kissed him this time, very gently.  Then he buried his face in my neck for another minute before popping open the door to leave.  He barely stepped out before he muttered "screw it," sat back down, and took my hand again.  He pretty much constantly has family problems of some sort, and now he detailed his most recent ones to me, his