Tag Archives: tears

Girl Talk: Everyone Saw Me Cry

Maude StandishAugust 8, 2011 //

“The important thing is that nobody saw you cry,” my mom kindly consoled me over the phone, after I told her how I had behaved like a drunk toddler at my friend’s wedding the night before.

“But mom, that’s just it, everyone saw me cry,” I tried to explain to her quietly, not wanting the couple having brunch next to me to hear.

“What?” my mom hollered back, slowly enunciating in the way older people distrusting technology tend to do at the slightest sign of interference.

“Everyone saw me cry,” I said a little louder this time.

“Where are you? I can’t hear you. I think we’re breaking up,” I clearly heard her say without the slightest hint of static or pending drop call.

“EVERYONE SAW ME CRY,” I shouted back, causing the chattering brunchers to stop and look at me, hints of tipsy pity filtering out from behind their sunglasses. Keep reading »

Ladies, Stop Crying! Your Tears Turn Him Off!

Amelia McDonell-ParryJanuary 6, 2011 //

Well, crap. Turning dudes on — I’ve been doing it wrong. Apparently, bawling my eyes out in front of a man isn’t the way to get his d**k hard. This revelatory information is brought to you by a new study which shows a female tears emit signals that actually turn men off. Male participants who sniffed “odorless tears” (do tears usually smell?) from women who cried during a sad movie had lower testosterone levels and were less sexually aroused by or attracted to the opposite sex than male participants who sniffed salt water. The explanation? For starters, when people cry in the presence of another person, they’re seeking comfort, a biological fact that is unique to humans; no other animals cry when they’re in distress. Additionally, the tears shed because of heightened emotion are chemically different than those that spill over when you’re, say, chopping onions. So, basically, “if women are communicating a chemical message that they need comfort, not sex, it seems appropriate that a man’s testosterone level would take a dive.” Possibly more interesting than the ZOMG revelation that men don’t sprout boners when women are sobbing is that researchers also think there could be a connection between emotional tears and lowering aggression. So, like, turning on the waterworks when your man is being an a-hole could make him chill out? Oh wait — tried, tested, knew that already. [ABC News] Keep reading »

What Makes Women Cry?

Wendy AtterberryAugust 12, 2009 //

Men may spend an average of 43 minutes a day — roughly a year of their lives — ogling women, but a new study has found that women spend six months more than that crying! Researchers found that “between birth and the age of 78 a woman will cry for more than 12,000 hours,” or roughly 16 months of her life. The study cites “hunger as a baby to falling out with a partner when older” as reasons for the tears. When I got an accidental mullet a few years back, I cried for three months straight. Keep reading »

Tears Are Not So Cathartic After All

Annika HarrisFebruary 4, 2009 //

Do your emotions ever overflow to the point that you know a “good cry” is inevitable? This happens to me regularly. I usually welcome the tears because conventional knowledge is that crying is cathartic. But sometimes I end up feeling worse than I did before. At least I’m not alone.

Tears accompany a myriad of human emotions — sadness, happiness, anger, nervousness, etc., and sometimes, a “good cry” is the only way to regain mental balance when your emotions are out of whack. But some researchers say that linking crying with emotional cleansing is misleading because not everyone feels better after every cry. Those, like me, who place a high expectation on a tearful breakdown often experience emotional confusion afterward.

So the next time I feel like crying, I’m just going to veg out on chocolate, watch a funny flick, and cuddle my cats, instead. [New York Times] Keep reading »