Big boys don't cry
Author: Stephen Morgan

I’m a man (heard that one before) and generally seen as a bit of a macho, but average size. I look somewhere between De Niro, Paccino and Garcia and I have the personality to match, in part. I’m trying to write this article as I cry, really.

“Big boys don’t cry” of course. We are conditioned for that from birth and even from our mothers. Yet the reason I’m writing this to try to explain why men tend not to cry in public and why they often will not even do it in front of their wives. The fact is clearly a frustrating, infuriating and confusing phenomenon for women, when faced with emotional crisis, the man shuts down and disappears into the garage to fiddle with the carburettor. The women is left no knowing how he really feels, what he is thinking, planning or what he might do next. Perhaps more than anything else its also a maddening fact that two people who love people just cant speak openly. If this gives any help for women facing this dilemma great, but also I hope it may help some other machos not to feel so bad about crying.

This male emotional shut down is not just a cause of childhood upbringingings, but, in my opinion, something which has become hardwired into the male emotional system over hundreds of thousands of existence, an existence which was quite different from the situation which we live in now. Let us remember that depending on when you classify the emergence of modern human, 5 millions or the modern species 500,000 years ago most of our lives has been lived as hunter-gather/warrior. The male predominantly playing the role of the hunter-warrior and the women the gather and up bringers of children. Life in suburbia has only existed for a hundred or few hundred of those thousands or millions of years. While the modern brain is developing quickly and adapting rapidly, it overwhelmingly still lives under the conditioning of the thousands of years, which preceded modern life and this goes for women as well as men. We know biologically that we have a triune brain - the reptilian and mammalian brain and the recent human neocortex. This human neocortex or human rational brain is where we find all our wonderful intelligence and technique. However, research shows that still in times of crisis the human neocortex can be quickly overridden and controlled by our animal brains. This is especially the case when in times of social and personal crisis when the mask of social respectability drops and the fangs of sabre tooth homo sapiens bear their teeth.

Now back during the early years of our evolution, natural selection meant a certain division of Labour for the male and female. We will concentrate on the male here. Men became the warrior/hunter class. These activities were obviously the most dangerous occupations needed for the survival and progression of the tribe (excepting childbirth). However, Why were men, instead of women chosen by natural selection to become the warrior class? The reason is men expendable. They cannot reproduce. From an evolutionary standpoint, within the species women are more valuable. Many men can die in battle or hunting, but so long as some males remain, it is always possible to reproduce the species. If the women had been the warriors and hunters, the species would have risked extinction. But this has had a negative effect in many ways on the male psychology over the eons and continues to filter down today. Hunting and battle necessitate the perfecting of certain emotions than those of hyper alertness, sensitivity, assertiveness and decisiveness Hunting/fighting means the sharpening of the emotions of fear, anger, aggression, self-defence. You have to cut off yourself from being hurt and upset by the sight of death and loss of friends, because you may let your guard down and cause injury to yourself or others. In general you must become less empathetic and more brutalized to be effective and successful. You have to learn to shut down your emotions in times of crisis. Indeed, failure to cultivate such emotions of anger, hate, aggression, ruthlessness, apathy would, in fact, be dangerous for the male under these conditions. Therefore these so-called negative emotions can, in fact be lifesavers in life threatening situations of hunting and war.

Staying with the tribe for a moment, consequently, the male who tends to openly show “weakness” emotionally by crying and depression, etc., could be looked on as a potential liability for war and hunting. Being potentially less of a bread-winner, it might also make him a less desirable mate for a female. Consequently, over hundreds of thousands of years the male has learned to suppress “soft” emotions and allow their expression only in special occasions – a funeral, a non-war loss of a wife or child etc, but even then, always as a temporary phenomenon and not part of a longer grieving process, which might bring into question their overall manhood. For the warrior to cry in public was a shame and a sign of weakness. It could cost him his respect, trust, position and also even his wife. Therefore, the traditional method of the male was to walk off into forests or sit on the top of a mountain alone and grieve there. Here they could let the tears flow in private, where nobody could see them or pass judgment.

Of course, the male, in fact, hurts no less emotionally than the female, but has been conditioned into not expressing it in the same healthier way, which do and which learned probably women by living in the collective tribal village. This imbalance in the emotional development of the male manifests itself in numerous ways in modern society, from domestic violence, drunkenness, social violence, sabotage at work and self-destructive behaviour. Changing these behaviours is incredibly difficult and sometimes not worth it for the women. However, if you have a husband who is the “disappearing-to-the garage” type”, ironically you probably have a relatively healthier man and one you have a better chance of living with, if you are prepared to understand and put up with this. You can’t force a man to change a million years of conditioning in one life time. When he goes out to the garage The reason for this that he is probably following his age-old conditioning and ways of finding release from inner pain. Men tend to prefer to cry alone to this day and I think that while being able to open publicly as a man and cry in front of a group is a positive thing, I believe we also need to at least recognize that this male isolated grieving is something, which men will and have to still do.

lined regards,
Steve Morgan








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