How to Stop Boys From Crying

What can be done about the men they become?

Image created by ChatGPT

The lecture from Mother hit differently this time. It wasn’t so much “You’ve been bad.” That was in there too, but mixed with a little, “How did I fail to teach you this?”

My basketball team had made it to the semi-finals and lost. There’d be no final finals for us. After we lined up to slap fives with the other team, chanting “good game” with all the sincerity of a chatbot, players began putting away equipment and grabbing their belongings.

One kid from my team cried. I was a cryer, and even I knew better. There’s no crying in basketball. I don’t remember exactly how it unfolded—lo these forty years hence—but I proceeded to let my feelings out through anger. I probably threw a basketball or two, kicked some stuff, and scrunched up my face to show everyone just how mad I was.

Nobody was impressed, especially not Mother. She would later inform me that this was not sportsmanlike. Crying was acceptable, but not anger.

Memories don’t age well, but I think that was the moment I actually started crying. I also may have just pouted harder or some combination of the two. It doesn’t matter. Mother was too late. I already knew the right way to see it: boys don’t cry.

My coach didn’t cry.

My Dad didn’t cry, even when he whacked his hand real good.

Even the other boys my age rarely cried.

In my work as a coach for men, I’ve developed some opinions and learned some truths about men. Lately, I’ve thought a lot about how vulnerability is trained out of men long before we lose our first game.

Similar to how little girls learn that their greatest asset is their looks, little boys learn that their emotional toughness is everything.

Let me be clear. Nobody formally teaches this. It’s just in the water.

Even enlightened men feel powerless to change

The net impact of this—at least for this man—is that even when an adult man understands that this has happened, there’s a limit to how much he can unspool the yarn. The stories we live with are too densely wrapped around our brains.

The parts of ourselves that work against our best intentions to be vulnerable rise up like a personal army to keep a man safe. Most of us simply don’t have the energy or motivation to resist, especially in a world that largely still validates our emotional toughness.

Hell. I’m one of those voices, even as I struggle against my own army of emotionally tough parts. On a recent Tolomen call—the men’s group I host—surrounded by a small group of trusted men, I battled back tears and apologized like I’d done something wrong.

On the call, I was sharing that I’d been in a state of depression for longer than I realized. It felt like a dark vessel of emotions held overhead, almost too distant to notice before, but now I could feel it. As I described this, tears rose up like a bruise, and my voice broke just slightly.

I knew I should lean into the feelings, but that personal army inside me guided my hands to wipe my face. It spoke in broken apologies through my vocal cords as if it were me.

The men’s faces broadcast unadulterated concern. Every furrow seemed to beg, "Stop apologizing,” and I tried to oblige, but it was too late. I’d already suppressed my crying.

Generation after generation, we mindlessly hand down this message to boys and other men: Don’t cry. Don’t drop your guard. Don’t be vulnerable.

It doesn’t just come from men. It comes from everyone and everywhere, until it starts coming from inside us. We start preaching it to other boys.

What this costs

What was lost on the call was the opportunity to share uncertainty and vulnerability with other men. I lost the chance to feel trust in other men to hold my most vulnerable emotions.

It’s the same message I inadvertently sent to the other basketball players that day our team lost: Crying is not acceptable. Externalizing anger is. I can imagine yet another kid seeing the one crying, and then me. Did he get the message that my reaction was the right one?

Every single time I’ve held back my vulnerability with another man, I’ve sent a message. I’ve been a carrier for this virus.

When, at the age of 18, one of my skateboarding friends was struck by a drunk driver, I struggled to surface the feelings that were there. The driver hit Steve so hard that he left his shoes on the side of the road, the first thing Steve’s mom saw when she arrived at the scene.

The day of the funeral, despite being a sensitive kid, I couldn’t let it out. Later that day, skating in downtown Minneapolis with my friends, I remember forcing tears out. It felt like deflating the end of an air mattress. Forced tears felt better than no tears, but not by much.

Where this ends

When I reflect on these stories, it mostly feels like we’re doomed to keep teaching boys not to cry.

Leaning back as far as I can, I see this as some kind of galaxy-wide emotional flywheel holding us back from what could come next if we could only stop the wheel and start something new.

A friend recently argued that this next generation of young men, some still boys, seems better equipped than we were.

I remember things differently. I remember being the eighteen-year-old who threw his arms around strangers to hug them. I remember feeling like we were the change, Gen X. We would usher in a new generation of men who didn’t fear vulnerability. I mean, that’s not how I would have put it at the time, but that’s the gist of it.

It’s not dissimilar from what seemed to be emerging from the late sixties and late seventies. That was another generation of young adult men bent on breaking gender norms, willing to brave their softer parts.

What happened to those hopeful young men?

I can only speak for myself. I worked in corporate long enough to learn that I needed to be more cautious. I was thoroughly exposed to all of HR’s well-intended warnings about closeness with team members.

Over time, I stopped trusting anything remotely vulnerable. It was all handshakes and fist bumps.

The mission

It’s tempting to try to put a neat bow on this essay, give readers something hopeful to hold onto. I’m sorry that I can’t do that. You deserve something nice to end on, but at this point, it feels pretty hopeless.

In some ways, I get why many men abandon vulnerability and embrace their inner caveman. It’s just easier. It’s the low bar so many expect me to trip on anyway.

And yet I am not done searching for a way in.

Just today, I spent a little time searching the socials for men hellbent on figuring this out. As beaten down as I feel on this, I can’t surrender the search. There has to be a way in, one that doesn’t sound like, “Men, you just need to embrace your feelings.”

This message isn’t wrong. It’s just not landing with its desired audience. Say it a million times, men aren’t hearing it. We need another way into this dialogue.

So, if you know of someone making this stand, someone affecting change for men of any age, making it okay for them to brave their vulnerable parts, please share.

I want to connect with these people. I want to ask them how. I want to steal what they are doing and spread that shit everywhere.

What could a world look like where little girls turn into women who know their value is tied to something other than their bodies, and boys who turn into men who don’t fear their vulnerabilities?

Thanks for being here.

~Damon