Men cry too

Some song titles do all the work. The one Ginette Reno carried with "Men cry too" is one of them: the phrase proves nothing, it simply states. And that plain statement still says, decades later, something many men have never heard put into words — let alone been given permission for.

In the article that follows, I look at how we identify and express what we feel. On this theme, I designed a test on managing emotions that helps you situate your relationship with your own emotions, with a guide to take the reflection further. And if you want to observe what your exchanges say about the way you express things, ScanMyLove analyses a real conversation and surfaces its patterns.

Because if the phrase needs saying at all, it's because it isn't obvious. And that starts very early.

What is learned before the age of six

Tears are not a matter of temperament. What varies between children isn't the capacity to feel: it's the vocabulary they are given to say it, and the reception their expression meets.

In identical situations, a boy who cries is more often invited to pull himself together, and a girl to tell what happened. Repeated over years, the difference isn't about the emotion itself — it's about what you learn to do with it.

The result is what psychologist Ronald Levant named normative male alexithymia. The term is technical, the idea is simple: many men have no difficulty feeling, they have difficulty naming. They know something is wrong, but the right word is missing — and without the word there is nothing to say, therefore nothing to share.

Levant stresses a point that is often forgotten: this is not a disorder. It is something learned. What is learned can be relearned.

🔗 Analyse your conversations with ScanMyLove — The way you express — or fail to express — what you feel leaves precise traces in written exchanges: what gets named, what gets avoided, what always comes back as anger.

Only one emotion allowed

The emotional education of boys doesn't forbid every emotion. It permits one: anger.

That selective permission has a consequence seen constantly in practice. Emotions with no right of entry don't disappear — they take the only route available. Sadness comes out as irritation. Worry comes out as annoyance. Shame comes out as aggression. A man who flares up over a trifle isn't necessarily an angry man: he is often a man for whom this is the only available channel.

It is also what makes the situation unreadable for those around him. The message sent doesn't match what is felt, and nobody — including the person speaking — can decode it.

The gender paradox

Two findings coexist, and putting them side by side is brutal.

Women are diagnosed with depression roughly twice as often as men. And men die by suicide roughly three times more than women.

Those two figures cannot both be true if we assume men are doing better. They are reconcilable in only one way: a large share of male depression goes unrecognised.

The reason lies in the shape it takes. Diagnostic criteria were built around an expression of suffering that speaks of sadness, loss of drive, tears. In many men, depression presents differently:

• irritability, unusual touchiness;
• gradual withdrawal, fewer calls, fewer outings;
• overinvestment in work or sport;
• increased alcohol consumption;
• physical complaints with no identified cause — back, sleep, digestion;
• risk-taking behind the wheel, in spending, elsewhere.

None of these signs looks like what we expect of depression. That is precisely why it slips through — including in front of a doctor, in front of close family, and in front of the man himself, who says he is "tired" or "under pressure".

What not crying costs

Holding an emotion back doesn't extinguish it. Research on expressive suppression — deliberately blocking the outward expression of what you feel — converges on one point: the emotion remains, and the body keeps responding to it. What is suppressed is the visible signal, not the internal state.

And that suppression has a running cost. Blocking continuously occupies resources: attention that is no longer available for the conversation at hand, for memory, for the other person. It is also what explains the frequently reported sensation of being present without being there.

At the scale of a relationship, the effect is clear: it isn't the emotion that creates distance, it's the constant effort to contain it.

Relearning, concretely

Naming what you feel is not an exercise in sensitivity. It is a technical skill, and it is trained as such.

Start with the body, not the feeling

"What am I feeling?" is too broad a question when the vocabulary is missing. "Where is it showing up?" is one anybody can answer: tight throat, clenched jaw, weight on the chest, knotted stomach.

Starting from sensation goes around the obstacle. The word comes afterwards, often on its own.

Widen the vocabulary, one word at a time

Between "fine" and "not fine" lies a continent. Annoyed, disappointed, worried, weary, hurt, overwhelmed, relieved, moved. Research on emotional granularity is consistent on this: the more precise words a person has for their states, the better they regulate them. It isn't a question of delicacy, it's a question of tooling.

Say one thing a day

One sentence, to someone. "That meeting annoyed me." "I was worried this morning." Neither confession nor deep conversation: a statement.

The aim isn't to open up, it is to break the automatism — the one that translates everything into "fine" before even looking.

Don't wait until the end of the line

The most frequent reason men consult isn't sadness: it's a physical symptom, a sleep problem, or a partner's request. Many come because someone else asked them to, and often late.

Consulting doesn't require having a word for what you have. You can perfectly well start with: "I don't know what's wrong, but something is." That is a sufficient starting point — a good one, in fact.

What the song gets right

The title doesn't argue, it states — and that is what makes it effective. It doesn't say a man should be able to cry, it says it happens, that it's a fact, and that there is nothing to prove.

That is also the clinical position. Tears are neither an admission of weakness nor proof of health: they are data. The real question isn't whether a man cries, but whether he has the words to say what is happening to him — before the body, the anger or the alcohol speak in his place.

That can be learned. Including late.

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Going further: alexithymia and difficulty identifying emotions · male mental load · the isolation of young men