Learning to Let it Show

I always feel that men have been behind the 8 ball from the start when it comes to emotional reaction. If you got past the age of about 10, at least when I was growing up, any indication that you were affected by something to the point of tears would have you labelled a ‘cissy’ or worse. The message came through loud and clear from society at large, and to some extent still does, that ‘real men don’t cry’ and that ‘you need to man up’. The latter makes me shake my head especially when I look at Men’s football, with the players screaming in agony, rolling around and punching the ground when they are tackled, and compare it to Women’s football where they hardly ever resort to that play acting (well apart from Italy and Spain in the Euros) and have to be really hurt to stay down. I would say that men need to ‘woman up’!

For all the reasons that I haven’t got time to go into here, the idea of tears of joy, which unfortunately (in a number of ways) have come easily to me, have always had to be hidden where possible. As I have got older the requirement to do so has seemed less important so I find myself able to express these feelings more openly, although not publicly. (As an aside I have never understood why it is supposed to be good to express emotions through swearing and threatening behaviour, but apparently that’s the behaviour of ‘real men’!)

When my children achieve goals or act in a selfless or beautiful way it will bring a tear to my eye. For example when my daughter plays football and does something that is really special that can set me off. Next weekend she is playing in the Preliminary Round of the Women’s F A Cup and I know that even when she walks out there will be tears in my eyes. I have followed her football journey since she was 9 years old and I never expected to see her play even at an early stage of the best competition in the game.

When I watched the Lionesses win the Euros in 2022 and 2025 I definitely ‘had something in my eye’! By the way, only men will ever use that phrase, because they want to minimise their displays of emotion.

When I am at a concert that gives me pure joy I can definitely feel like I ‘have been chopping onions’, another nonsensical male excuse for expressing the full range of emotions. It’s usually when the person or people I am with show complete joy that I find that happening, although it can happen on my own account.

Great music, enjoyable books, family films and spectacular shows can all give me that rush of emotion. In each category I give you, Vltava by Smetana, A Christmas Carol, Inside Out and Willy Wonka, Evita and The Nutcracker. Also certain TV shows can ‘catch me out’ like Home and Away. Meeting Julie Dawn Cole left me with a similar feeling.

Christmas can bring me that type of reaction when we are all together as a family and we are just enjoying opening our presents or playing games or sharing a meal. That tends to be when ‘it’s a bit dusty in here’.

So there you have it. Lots of triggers but lots of excuses. That is the lot of the male through the ages. I remember when I was a child watching girls talk to each other, cry and comfort each other and express emotions far more naturally and I always wished I had been a girl because I found that so much more natural. I still do and that’s why I naturally gravitate towards women’s sport with it’s more positive and natural displays of emotion from the gender that does it better.