Whenever my 5-year-old boy gets hurt and starts to cry, and someone around says, “Don’t cry, boys don’t cry, don’t let the girls laugh at you.”
I shut it down immediately.
My son is allowed to cry. He is allowed to feel things and show that he feels them.
And if that makes you uncomfortable, that is your problem to deal with, not his.
What I will not do is hand my son the same broken instruction that was handed to the men before him: that a real man holds it all in and figures it out alone.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where nobody teaches men how to cry.
From the time they are small boys, they are told to feel everything and display nothing.
But emotions don’t disappear just because you’ve been told not to express them. They find other exits.
So, men cry. They just do it without tears.
6 Ways Men Cry Without Tears
1. He Goes Silent
I’m not saying every time a man goes silent, he’s crying.
No.
Sometimes silence is just silence.
Sometimes a man is just existing quietly in his own head. I’m a woman, and there are days I don’t want to talk to a single soul.
Nothing is wrong; I just need to be alone with my thoughts.
Of course, I’m not always able to afford that kind of luxury because I’m a mom of two young kids. Someone always needs something. 😂
But the silence of a crying man is different. It’s heavy.
Something behind his eyes has gone somewhere you can’t follow, and no matter how many times you ask what’s wrong, he says nothing.
In man language, nothing is wrong sometimes means something is very wrong, and I have no idea how to explain it to you yet.
The worst thing you can do in this moment is make his silence about you, like most of us women do.
Don’t turn it into why won’t you talk to me, what did I do, why are you shutting me out?
Because he now has to manage your feelings on top of his own, and the silence gets thicker.
The best thing you can do is stay close without pressuring him.
Let him know you’re there with your presence.
Most times, he’ll come back on his own. And when he does, he’ll tell you everything because you gave him the space to find the words instead of panicking while he was still looking for them.
2. He Picks a Fight
As I said in the intro, feelings don’t disappear just because you don’t express them.
They find other outlets.
And one of the most common outlets is a fight about something that has absolutely nothing to do with what’s actually going on.
You know this fight. You’ve been in this fight.
It’s usually something minor, something that on a normal day would have passed without comment.
But today it’s a whole thing.
And you’re matching his energy now because, really, who has for a grown man’s tantrums?
It’s very likely that he has been carrying something, maybe stress, fear, sadness, or something that has been sitting on his chest for days.
This is not an excuse for a man who is chronically aggressive or who uses anger to control and intimidate.
That is a completely different conversation, but for the average man who is not naturally expressive, a disproportionate reaction to something small is worth pausing over.
Because sometimes the argument isn’t the problem.
It’s just the only door he could find into a conversation he desperately needed to have.
3. He Overworks
I remember when we had to let our company driver go because of an offense.
We told him we’d pay him a severance fee, expecting that to soften the blow of firing him.
But he said he appreciated it, but the job was never really about the money. It was about having somewhere to go every morning and being useful somewhere.
That gave him a sense of purpose.
Well, we had to retain him with a warning because we couldn’t find a worthy replacement.
This is something that lives in the DNA of most men: the need to be useful.
It’s more than just ambition; it’s identity. For a lot of men, what they do and who they are is the same sentence.
So when something is hurting them emotionally, many men do the one thing that makes them feel like themselves again.
They throw themselves into work. And the world applauds them for it.
Aww, he’s so driven. Such a provider.
Nobody stops to ask what he’s running from.
A man can be the most productive person in the room and still be quietly falling apart.
4. He Becomes Physically Affectionate Out of Nowhere
A lot of women have accused their men of not being able to cuddle without it leading to something else.
But there are times your man reaches for you just to be close with no agenda or expectation.
Maybe he just wants to hold your hand, sit right next to you, hug you tighter and longer, holds you tighter in bed…
You know the touch is different.
When a man is going through a lot, he will sometimes reach for the one thing that doesn’t require words at all.
Touch.
So don’t pull back and start asking twenty questions.
Just hold him back and be the safe place he’s looking for. The conversation will come when he’s ready.
5. He Makes a Joke Out of It
You know how we are told to check on our friends who are the life of the party?
That advice exists for a reason because there is a particular kind of person who has mastered the art of being the funniest person in the room while being the most broken person in the room.
And men have perfected this skill in a way that is honestly impressive and heartbreaking at the same time.
He makes everyone laugh, and people love being around him because he’s fun
But he is suffering.
You’ll see it if you’re paying attention. He could drop something real and then cover it with humor before anyone can respond to the real thing.
Because a joke is safe.
But if you let the laughter settle and then kindly say, ” Hey, were you serious just now?” you will sometimes find a man who is so relieved someone finally noticed that he’s not fine.
6. He Drinks More, Sleeps More, or Disappears Into His Phone
These are the ones that worry me most because they’re the ones we normalize.
There is a difference between a man who is resting and a man who is hiding.
The resting man comes back. He puts the phone down, and he wakes up refreshed when he sleeps.
The hiding man just moves from one escape to the next, because the thing he’s running from is still there.
Alcohol, sleep, and screens in the right doses are just normal parts of life, but in excess, they become something else entirely.
If you notice any of these in your man, ask him, ”Are you okay? I mean really okay.”
Sometimes all it takes to help a man find his way back to the surface is knowing that someone noticed he was underwater.
And that someone was you.