It's Manly to Cry

“It’s manly to cry.”

It came from a cute old lady sitting around a coffee shop table full of feisty old couples. They were discussing some totally irrelevant movie when her statement caught my attention.

Ironically enough, I was discussing this exact issue with a guy friend of mine last night.

“Why do women say they want a man who cries? No they don’t!” He argued that no woman actually wants to see a man cry.

It got me wondering, do we really want to see men cry? Do we want the sensitively, in-tune with his emotions, touchy feely kind of guy?

Personally, I just want to know that a man has the capability to tap into that part of his soul. I don’t actually want him to, I just want to know he’s capable of it in case of emergency or something.

I watched a good, tear jerking chick flick with a girlfriend of mine yesterday. I have seen the movie a million times and I cry during the same scene every time. I love watching it with my girlfriends and sharing the teary moments of emotional torment over a love story.

I told my friend that I don’t really want to have that in common with a man. Then I thought, wait, do I?

Because, let’s face it, if I had watched that movie with any of my guy friends and I looked over during that scene and caught a tear rolling down his cheek, I would probably ask him to marry me.

Then the next day when we’re hanging with the guys and they find out he cried at a chick flick or that he was even watching a chick flick, he would quickly become the center of every joke imaginable. And that, quite honestly, is not attractive. Nobody wants that guy.

So maybe we want a man who is secretly sensitive, someone who can cry when he’s alone with me and then go out and play football with the guys like nothing happened. Then I’d secretly tell all my girlfriends to make them jealous, like, “Hey girls, see that super hot quarterback out there? Yeah, we watched ‘PS I Love You’ last night… and he cried!”

Of course one of those girls is inevitably dating one of the other guys on the field and she would go home and tell him that my man was crying over a chick flick and it would all be over.

Maybe Hilary Swank was right in ‘PS I Love You’ … we women have absolutely no idea what we want.