I'm an emotional dude

Undertoad • Oct 22, 2012 1:50 pm
Raised by a single parent mom, you know, you don't worry about showing your emotions

When I was a kid I read something about some study showed that men holding back crying was a tremendous tension and lowered their life span

I think I read that when I was 8 or something

And now I realize that it was not so very scientific but was reported because it was the zeitgeist of the time

We were in a time when both the tragedy of war and the new reality of a better and longer life were becoming apparent

Actual toughguy men who were previously needed to do terrible gruntwork were no longer in high demand

Now we were needed to evolve and become leaders by doing thinking work in offices

Then I was born and my father died and I was raised by mom and watched as she cried and cried

I could not help but learn to cry myself at the terrible sadness of life

I am sometimes as sensitive as that little child.
limey • Oct 22, 2012 1:55 pm
Is that bad? I don't think so.
infinite monkey • Oct 22, 2012 2:08 pm
Nope. Not bad at all.

Being real is a very good thing.
glatt • Oct 22, 2012 2:22 pm
It's interesting. I think being emotional is not a bad thing at all, and I think it's good to express your feelings. I encourage it in my kids. But I'm not that way myself.

I think I've cried 3-4 times in the last 20 years. I think I've gotten really mad about the same number of times. But I'll complain about stuff. That's kind of like being mad.

There are more emotions than just the negative ones though. I think I express the positive emotions fairly frequently.

I don't know. Writing about this is requires thinking about it, and thinking about emotions is kind of doing it wrong. You feel emotions, you don't think about them.

Thinking back, my family didn't do emotions much. My dad certainly didn't.
toranokaze • Oct 22, 2012 8:22 pm
I'm an emotional dude as well, and honestly I don't like it. Woman aren't attacked by it, being emotional hasn't helped me do anything it is just a burden. Now I can't truly stop being emotional without feeling sycophantic.

I think I have cried 3-4 times, in the last two days.
And of course I also wear them on my sleave , so when I'm happy I act happy, when I'm sad I act sad ect, ect.
sexobon • Oct 23, 2012 12:05 am
I had an emotion once ... I didn't like it ... make that twice.

Emotions are fine after one has learned how to channel them; unless, one is allergic* to emotions like tw.

*(not a true allergy, just an idiosyncratic reaction).
Clodfobble • Oct 23, 2012 11:15 pm
I cry more than most dudes, but considerably less than most chicks. It's been at least 6 months since the last time I can remember doing it. And the vast majority of the time, I am crying not over something specific or sad, but because I am overwhelmed with frustration.
jimhelm • Oct 23, 2012 11:24 pm
I cried at the end of Time Travelers Wife.
Sperlock • Oct 23, 2012 11:44 pm
I cry as well, though not that often (maybe once or twice an average year). When the need arises, I will only do so when I feel I am in a safe environment.
xoxoxoBruce • Oct 24, 2012 1:05 am
Nothing wrong with being emotional, as long as you don't let it be debilitating.
Juniper • Oct 24, 2012 1:37 am
I'm a woman (duh) and yeah, I cry. I cry real easy about stupid stuff and it really pisses me off. I cry so often about God knows whatever hits me at the time - nobody can even tell when I only have watering eyes from yawning. It's stupid.

And I'm not a *sad* person most of the time. I don't cry 'cause stuff is sad. That would make sense.

I can only count maybe twice or three times ever my husband cried. And it was deaths. My dad, my mom, his mom. In fact he gets mad at me when I cry. Which makes me get mad at him and cry even more. It's seriously stupid.

I always told my kids - especially my boy - that it's okay to cry when you're hurt or sad, and it would be kind of silly not to. But my son's 14 and tough from wrestling, in which boys cry when they lose and everyone makes fun of them, so he ain't gonna cry. :(
footfootfoot • Oct 24, 2012 3:32 pm
He was an emotional dude
Raised on Kleenexes
He couldn't help feeling at times
There was a little more to life...


eta: Holy CATS! It's Juniper!
Flint • Oct 24, 2012 4:29 pm
I think many of us, such as emotional dudes, may be experiencing anomie.

And since the rate of changes to human culture is exponentially accelerating, as observed by Ray Kurzweil and others, I don't know where this is taking us. I don't know if social norms are something which will be possible to continue existing.
Beest • Oct 24, 2012 4:52 pm
Flint;835574 wrote:
I think many of us, such as emotional dudes, may be experiencing anomie.

And since the rate of changes to human culture is exponentially accelerating, as observed by Ray Kurzweil and others, I don't know where this is taking us. I don't know if social norms are something which will be possible to continue existing.


or the range over which we measure our society and judge norms by are so much smaller, soceity is tolerant of many micro norms. Instead of norms being the country you live in, or city or town, it might be within your household, or the peope you share an office with, or in an online gaming guild or forum. Instead of having to fit into larger societal norms, it's easier to drift around and find a micro society where your internal norms are the group norms.
And at the extreme, the size of the group is 1 you are your own norm.

Image

:p:
infinite monkey • Oct 24, 2012 4:53 pm
So when you walk into a bar, you yell "NORM!"
footfootfoot • Oct 24, 2012 7:47 pm
With friends like that, who needs anomies?
infinite monkey • Oct 24, 2012 7:59 pm
Sea anomies, that's who!
footfootfoot • Oct 24, 2012 9:38 pm
Sea one anomie, you've seen 'em all.
infinite monkey • Oct 24, 2012 10:31 pm
lmao
Gravdigr • Nov 4, 2012 6:22 pm
I'm a fairly emotional guy. I cry at the end of Dances With Wolves every time. I've been watching "The Walking Dead" on Netflix, and I find myself tearing up almost every time Rick has a father/son moment with his son Carl.

It happens more, the older I get, I've noticed.
Trilby • Nov 10, 2012 4:46 pm
I rarely cry. I think it's the meds. They numb me up so much-but it's better to feel nothing than to feel like you want to put an axe in your head.

Sometimes I think I am more cyborg than human. I can watch all the Feed the Children commercials you can throw at me but show me ONE abused animal and I'm changing the channel, ya know? Isn't that weird?

I find most people dull; but, again, maybe that's the meds. I've been on them forever but every time I try to go off them - I'm off a cliff. Better to stay numb than in pain. I know a lot of pop songs don't agree with that but I've lived with that pain and I say no thank you.

eta: I know a couple women that are okay but they speak entirely in cliches! AND they think they're being funny/original! I can't fake laughter very well and they've sort of disengaged themselves from me, which is fine (they are AA buds, nothing more) but one of them is really really smart, she's just----i guess suppressing so much rage that she can only communicate in pat conversations.. The one time she got real with me she was crying. She says I'm fake but I think that's projection on her part. she has to appear to be IN CONTROL (like Dexter) of EVERYTHING all the time. She once told me she wasn't 'warm and fuzzy' so not to expect that. Okay, that's fine. but I, for all my numbness and problems with personal relationships LIKE warm and fuzzy, NEED warm and fuzzy and from here on out, by god, will seek the warm and fuzzy people of this mighty land.

sorry. got carried away there. :blush:
Clodfobble • Nov 10, 2012 4:54 pm
You ever feel like you want to cry, but just can't muster it?

I think I need a hobby.
footfootfoot • Nov 10, 2012 7:29 pm
Clodfobble;838395 wrote:
You ever feel like you want to cry, but just can't muster it?

I think I need a hobby.


Yes. And I've also felt that I should cry and couldn't get that together either.
Griff • Nov 10, 2012 7:30 pm
I've been there.
BigV • Nov 11, 2012 10:17 pm
Griff;838419 wrote:
I've been there.


you've written about it too
Sheldonrs • Nov 12, 2012 12:04 pm
I cry for some movies, books, songs, etc.
But not when it involves me in real life.
I didn't cry when my Mom died or when other family or friends died or suffered losses, etc.. I didn't cry during my past break-ups.
I think I'm actually dead inside to real life.
Flint • Nov 12, 2012 12:22 pm
Movies, music, they get around our defenses, whereas we can't let ourselves lose control of sustained circumstances of our real life, with fictional drama we can let our endocrine systems, etc. release all that suppressed emotion.
Trilby • Nov 13, 2012 7:46 am
we don't cry/freak because of cognitive dissonance. If we really THOUGHT about all the stuff coming our way-we couldn't function. One guy (some PhD or such) felt that schizophrenics were the only people really experiencing the terror that is life on this planet.