Why do my male tears make so many people uncomfortable?

Crying can be the ultimate release and by promoting a male ‘no tear zone’, we’re depriving ourselves of an evolutionary gift

Barack Obama wipes away tears as he cries while speaking about his grandmother during a rally at University of North Carolina on November 3, 2008 (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Sitting alone, my eyes are welling up. I’m watching Marley & Me, and that poor dog is being put down. If you’ve seen it, you know my pain. If not, sorry for the spoiler. Thing is, alongside my tears there’s another feeling bubbling up inside me. A feeling that I’m a man, and I shouldn’t be crying at all.

To my horror, my poor partner walks in. She's now faced with the most uncomfortable of situations; a 6’ 3”, 15 stone, blubbering man. It’s not something she’s encountered before, and she’s not sure what to do. Nobody is meant to see me like this. And yet I’ve seen her cry a thousand times and haven’t thought twice about it.

For men, crying is perceived as the ultimate weakness. For women it’s perfectly normal. There’s something very strange about that.

Men are killing themselves at an alarming rate in the UK. Almost one hundred of us do it every week. That’s a shockingly high figure, but for some it seems like the only way out of their torment. They’re stuck in a world where men can’t talk about their feelings, or mental health concerns. Feelings are what women have. Men aren’t allowed.

Apparently London is officially the unhappiest place in the UK for men. More than half of the capital’s males admit they want to cry at least once a month. (I’d bet more really do, but damned if they’d admit it.) The study said these men ‘want to cry’, so what’s preventing them from actually doing it?

It doesn’t take a genius to work that out.

We’re constantly slapped in the face by images of invincible superheroes, by James Bonds in Aston Martins and by David Gandy and his impossible abs. It’s how all men should be: hunky, charming, rich, strong. But what happens when we fall below these levels of manliness? Cue the guilt, the shame and the depression.

That study suggests the biggest cause of male unhappiness was the need to feel like a ‘real man’. After all, real men don’t have feelings; they rescue damsels in distress and wear perfectly tailored suits. James Bond doesn’t cry, ever. Neither does Batman. They’re both too busy being awesome. David Gandy might cry in private, but Photoshop-Gandy sure as hell doesn’t. His perfect shoulders are for others to cry on.

In among their peers, no man dares to show weakness. A crying man is immediately reduced to lowered social status – a female status, a “girl”. It's supposed to be an insult, but women are killing themselves far less than men, so they’re clearly doing something right. Perhaps it’s this: they cry, on average, almost five times as often as men. Eureka.

Humans are the only animals who cry emotional tears; it’s a trait we developed that scientists theorise helps with the complexities of our moods. Tears contain a stress hormone - so crying literally washes stress out of our bodies. Crying can be the ultimate release and by promoting a male ‘no tear zone’, we’re depriving ourselves of an evolutionary gift.

Science wants us to cry; masculinity does not.

It took the death of a parent for me to accept my own tears. My dad’s generation were raised by people who lived and fought in proper wars. No wonder, then, that the ‘stiff upper lip’ was still at the forefront of their minds. Thing is, I’d been bottling things up for too long, and felt remarkably more sane once my lid was lifted. I now cry at the death of fictional movie-dogs and it does wonders for my mood.

Despite the message printed on tea towels across the land, time has moved forward from the days of ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. We have to stop pushing the masculinity agenda once and for all and accept that tears can be the best medicine.

So brothers, unite! Go forth and cry. You might just regret it if you don’t.