I am kind of a dichotomy

On the one hand, I cry very easily with regards to my relationship and would say I have cried at least once a month with regards to that. Usually these are full out crying with tears.  For some reason, I tend to cry anytime my boyfriend and I get in the slightest of arguments.

On the other hand, I am very stoic when it comes to work and the rest of my life.  I would say I have cried twice this year in this realm.  Both times I just let the tears roll down my face after watching particularly sad movies. 

I don't often find myself holding back tears very often.  I'm not sure why.

Sorry, a strange mix of very emotional and and emotionally distant (as a medical student, I tend to see pretty sad things on a regular basis that don't move me to tears)...

Not a criticism, sorry if it sounded that way - just a question on whether you thought the 30% figure was too high or just the 1 to 2 times per month figure. Certainly do not think you where overreacting - I value you opinions and thoughts a great deal.

You are so right with regard to the participants of a poll like this. Even the online questionnaire I have does not really reflect the 'normal' male or female. The people who complete the survey must have searched on crying in some way - perhaps because they have recently been crying a lot - which means the answers they give lean towards more frequent crying.

I'd also like to be able to ask a large number (the bigger the sample the better) of 'normal' males and female about their crying habits and be sure that the answers I was getting back from them were honest and accurate. I've often though that giving people a dairy to keep for a year where they recorded every tearful moment would be great - but who is going to invest this amount of effort - and given the numbers to make it work it would be very difficult to achieve. Although it would be a ground breaking study into adult crying if successful.

tearhunter wrote:

Thanks Fallingtears, I find your response interesting in several ways. First I've cried more than you it would appear in the last 12 months!   

Secondly it appears you may have forgotten events where you have been crying to a level where you have shed tears - most of my tearful experiences are still fresh in my mind. I wonder if this is because I am a guy that is not supposed to cry so when I do it has a greater impact - don't know really.

Also, you say you get the tears in the eyes thing far more often than flowing tears. It shoulds like you fight the urge to cry tears when you become emotional. If you allowed your emotions to take over would these teary eyed moment result in full crying and flowing tears or do you feel you naturally stop crying before tears appear?

I think it's a fair comment that I fight the urge to cry when I become emotional. When I was younger I even did so when I was alone. Not sure why. In more recent years I have allowed myself to cry more when alone and also in front of close family members. However some of the teary eyed moments I experience would definitely result in full crying sessions if I allowed my emotions to take over and didn't hold back.
I will have to pay more attention to this from now on so I can give more accurate descriptions! 

woundedpuppy wrote:

No, I did not even think of there being any criticism in your post.  I guess I just reconsidered.  And looking at it again, I see that I also did the math wrong for the original study, as I had thought they were implying that 30% of men cry once a month!!  That would have been pretty impressive, but that's not what they asked.  They just asked, "When did you last cry?" and 30% had in the past month.  I would have been interested to know how many times those same men had cried over the past year (and the reasons for their crying, which I think would have painted a clearer picture).  The guesstimate you came up with for guys (4 times a year) doesn't sound unreasonable, though.  But an in-depth study on it would be fascinating.

No worries, I was just concerned in my haste to reply I'd sounded a bit critical - glad it didn't sound that way.

I agree that any crying frequency study needs to ask more about the crying pattern over a significant period of time - say a year to identify the crying clusters that seam to appear in both male and female crying.
It's clear that in both sexes that crying does not follow a straight so many times a month or year ratio. But it's very difficult to ask a person off the street a question which gets them to accurately mark times they have cried over say a year. A couple of you here have indicated that you find it quite difficult to remember crying events which occurred sometime ago.

Also, any question would have to define what the person regards as 'crying' - do you have to shed a tear to be crying or is wet eyes crying - just not as intense as tears crying!

Personally I consider tears the in eyes as crying - the persons emotions have been triggered, their body has produced an increased volume of tears and often this intial emotional jolt comes with either a deep intake of breath or a wobble in the voice if speaking - could be consider minor but indicates perhaps a brief loss of control.

It's clearly at the lower end of the crying spectrum but a crying event none the less (in my view) - please agree or disagree

I would so much like to conduct a study into this, I think I'll start of by constructing a series of (hopefully) straight forward questions which with the help of the members of this forum can be shaped into something that would help solve this problem. I'll post in another thread later but I fully expect my first attempt to be in need of changes - in fact I've not thought how to tackle the frequency issue noted above so that might be the first problem. But, sometimes getting something together to discuss and change is better than trying to achieve perfection first time out.

Whether I ever get the courage to ask people directly to complete the final set of questions remains to be seen - but it will be fun building it at least   

More in another thread soon !

TorNorth wrote:

tearhunter wrote:

Yes please!   

What he said. Looking in the mirror helps

Yeah, but crying in the mirror is not always possible - interesting though!

Have you guys ever watched yourself cry real emotional tears. I've watched tears fall down my face countless times due to my eyes watering but watching tears due to full on emotional crying is much less common.However I have witness my emotional tears several times mainly in the car rearview mirror - quite an odd experience! I did tend to stop crying quite quickly after noticing however.