When we cry

When we cry
S

SAR

Hi everyone,

I couldn't help but notice the references to trying not to cry while I was reading the thread wifenneed started about silence from spouses. This really hits home for me, and I know that she's not the first partner on this forum to talk about holding back tears because of the response she'll get from her survivor husband.

What is it that's so threatening about the tears of a friend or partner? Why does it seem that my boyfriend would rather think that I'm angry AT him than sad over something that happened?

He's at a point now where he will cry in front of me (or, at all), although he has to be pretty upset for it to happen. But, seeing him cry usually makes ME want to cry, and then I hold back because when I start crying in response to his tears, he stops. I could see if he withdrew because he didn't want to start crying himself, but he was the one crying in the first place!

Anyone else?
 
There is nothing threatening about the tears of a partner. The thing is at least for me is that when my partner cries then it hits me that i am hurting him very deeply in order to see those tears. Then i am lost in a world of wanting to punish myself for doing that to him. I feel that if he's angry at me at least he's justified and i deserve it.
 
SAR

Your question is an easy one to ask, but oh so hard to answer. And as always, I am not even going to try to answer it in the general case, but I will tell you some of the reasons it is hard for me...

1. People that are crying are (generally) unhappy and people that are unhappy want to change that which (irrationally) likely means leaving me. This is some sound logic mixed with some that is totally whacked and I can tell you that there is no use reasoning with it. The fear of abandonment, when it shows up, cannot be got rid of with logic (I have spend a lot of time trying). If you do discover what will send it packing, please let me know.

2. People that are crying need (want) some sort of comfort. No one has ever taught me how to do that, so when people around me need comforting, I get slapped in the face with how inadequate I am. When I get overly conscious of my inadequacies, I forget that I am good at anything, and we all know that people that are good for nothing get abandoned. See #1.

3. People that are crying are feeling, and probably feeling pretty intense stuff. Well, my own experiences with feeligs, especailly intense ones, has not been so great. It is confusing, sometimes shaming, and typically leads to distancing. Since genuine empathy is pretty hard for me (I have perfected a sort of psuedo-empathy I pass of for the real thing) I can only assume that everyone has the same kind of life experience with feelings that I do. Ergo, please don't cry because that means you are about to distance. See #1.


So to recap, crying aggrevates fears of abandonment that usually cannot be reasoned with. Crying also means there is a lot of emotion going on, and this situation is frightening for me, in part becaues I have had such bad run ins with it, and in part because I have so little actaul experience with it. Unknown things are best avoided (at least in the frightened person's mind).

This, of course, is only the first few things that popped into my head. I am sure if I sat here I could crank off my usual four pages... I say this just to illustrate that the question is a complicated one that drives right to the heart of "why is intamacy hard?"

W
 
PS...

You may think that it would cause the same sort of thing when people were angry AT me, but it does not. Remeber, I have lots of experience with people getting mad at me, and therefore I undertand better how to cope with that (even if the coping strategies are not very healthy). So moving sadness to anger does at least move the struggle onto familiar turf.

W
 
I think there is another possible dynamic at work here.

If you make someone angry, it is entirely possible that their anger says more about them than about you or what you did.

But if you make a person cry, then you have hurt them and this makes you abusive.

So I'd rather be a thoughtless pig who makes you furious than an abuser who made you cry.

I'm not saying this is true, or that it's even a conscious thought process, just that it is one possible explanation; one that has been true for me.
 
Wrangler wrote this: "People that are crying need (want) some sort of comfort. No one has ever taught me how to do that, so when people around me need comforting, I get slapped in the face with how inadequate I am. When I get overly conscious of my inadequacies, I forget that I am good at anything, and we all know that people that are good for nothing get abandoned."

I think this is my husband exactly. Seeing my hurt (crying, tearing up) sends him father down the black hole, now he's hurting me, as well as dealing with feeling dirty and worthless and all the other lies he was fed as a child. That's why I want to be strong for him, so that he knows yes, I'm hurting, but I'm not going to leave him. I say I want to give up, but I want to give up trying to crack the steel coating (so that he at least will talk to me/acknowledge my presence). I never want to give up on him. It just gets exhausting trying to find that way to break the ice..........so that he'll come back to life, and not silence and isolation.

Kathy
 
This whole crying thing just sucks for me.. I am hurting from something he did that was really mean or inconsiderate, and he just throws fuel on the fire.

What will it take to let him know that me crying is NOT about me trying to manipulate him, but all about an expression of my own feelings???

He is convinced that my crying is me trying to manipulate him, and that leads to some pretty hostile behaviour on his part, which just makes me feel WORSE.

I tried telling him flat out "this is NOT about you but me crying is ALL about my own feelings" but he's not buying it.

How do I get him to stop navel gazing and start realizing that this behaviour, the rubbing salt in my wounds is about the WORST thing he can do? Its much worse than the cold-shutting-out routine, that one I can handle a lot better than this one.

feeling really emotinoally bruised today

PAS

P
 
PAS-
How about printing out what you just posted and giving it to him? For me thats' the only way I can communicate with my husband when he is in a hole. Just a thought. Wish I was there for you to cry on my shoulder, sister.

I'm still bruised form last week too, trying to recover fromm the yo-yo effect of his isolation/then engaging back with us (wife and kids).

Hopefully SAR will have some words of wisdom, mine are failing me right now....

Hugs and good wishes I send to you PAS.....
 
Al, Wrangler, Don-NY,

Thanks for your responses... I think a lot of the partners here have observed a more dramatic and angry shift of emotions in their survivor partners than the one I get from my boyfriend. Mine just stops his own crying, thereby eliminating the thing that is hurting me (his own tears)... this hurts me more, though, because I know that it's destructive for him to bottle his own emotions and I don't want to be the cause of that, and I certainly don't want him to resent me for it.

One reason I started this thread is that I've seen so many of the partners here talk about how their tears are met with actual anger, or behavior that seems designed to provoke anger. (I don't know if this is something you guys do or have done) After reading your responses I think I understand how that behavior is a way to shift the emotions of the partner into a more comfortable place. Am I being unfair to see that as a way to shift responsibility as well? That is, if my behavior is no longer confronting you with my hurt, you no longer have to deal with the fact that you may have hurt me?


PAS... you said what I had sort of assumed one of the guys would say :rolleyes: ... that tears are a tried-and-true method of manipulation and that our partners have seen so much of this, that they assume that we cry in order to manipulate them, and the perceived manipulation is the source of the anger. I don't know... maybe there is some sort of manipulation after-the-fact in that even if we don't start crying on purpose, we still expect tears to be met with a certain response, and that later, some of the anger will be about that: "I started to CRY and then he just did X"? Is that sort of anger legitimate for us to bring to a partner or is that anger that is about us and that we need to handle on our own? Then again, if the anger is about the actual behavior and not at all about the behavior as a reaction to tears, maybe that's legitimate? Just some more thoughts.

SAR
 
I cry 'emotionally' but try to hold it back - the macho thing :rolleyes: - which is getting harder to maintain as I heal more.
But for me it's something I've only ever done in front of other people, under any circumstance, since I started my healing.

When my wife cries emotionally I feel lost, I don't know how to tap into her emotion properly - especially if she's emotional about me and my problems, I just don't have all those tools yet.
But if she's emotional about someone else I can deal with that, empathise in a meaningful way, and most times say the right things.

I think Wrangler said a lot that makes perfect sense as well.

Dave
 
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