Why Men Don't Like to Cry

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Why Men Don't Like to Cry

Here is a video by a guy named Thomas Golden on men and emotions.

But this video is so much more. It is about some fundamental differences between men and women--how hormonal differences result in emotional differences.

For instance, both men and women get a blast of oxytocin (the cuddling hormone) when their brains get stressed, but the testosterone in men neutralize it while women's estrogen amplifies it.

So women want to cuddle, for instance, after making love and men want to do something, anything but cuddle, or maybe just fall asleep.

There's a lot more information like this in this video.

Two words of warning. Golden is more oriented toward grief counseling that anything else. And he uses jargon at times that will sound to some people like psychobabble (especially the bleeding heart liberal caricature kind, with the virtuous African tribes and the whole nine yards ). But the information he conveys is a door to a fascinating look into the innate nature of humans from a gender perspective.

As a budding writer, I find this information priceless. In my view, you have to work from a model of what humans actually are before you take them to what you think they could and should be, that is if you want to anchor your vision to reality. In other words, in building a character, you start with universal traits, then make the changes on top of that. You don't just Frankenstein a character by adding this component and that at random because of a theory, whim, you gotta do something, etc.

(A curiosity: "to Frankenstein a character" is actually a technical term in screenwriting jargon. Seriously. It means constructing a character by filling in the blanks on a character template.)

Enjoy the video (if you resonate with the information, or God forbid, the liberal sentiment , as I suspect some people will hate it ).

There is good news for OL. Amazon has lifted the ban on associates living in Illinois because the State Supreme Court struck down the law Amazon objected to, so I am allowed to make some chump change off of Amazon sales (if I use my affiliate link). So I will.

If anyone is interested in learning more about Thomas Golden's ideas, here are his two books on Amazon.

Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing

The Way Men Heal

(Kindle only)

I am getting these books myself, despite their focus on grief, because I want to see what else Golden comes up with regarding the emotional/hormonal differences between men and women.

Michael

[anthony]

"Sometimes when a man wants to cry, he gets angry; when a woman wants to get angry, she cries: two forms of non-self-assertiveness, disguised as emotional expressiveness."

[N. Branden]

[BaalChatzaf]

I think I know.

Blubbing interferes with logical thought.

Stiff upper liip, man! And for God's sake, don't blub!

Ba'al Chatzaf