Men: How do you feel & react when you see women cry?

[yetineti]

@Natasha Tori Maru

19 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

@yetineti crying is a powerful external signal of distress when authentic. I think it's normally a signal of a need. Comfort is the standard.

Yes.

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Infants and children, prior to language, often default to crying as a bid for connection of some sort. It signals some sort of overwhelm as a result of a feeling, sensation or thought.

Some come out crying. Call and response comfort. Remarkably simple, actually.

Imagine if we had to connect but for every output we can’t receive an input and for every input we can’t output!

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I think the thread has established that authenticity matters, but crying does not establish intent. 

Crying is mysterious. Nobody questions a smile. People recognize a smile can be malicious but nobody seems to let that change their default interpretation or ‘genderize’ it.

What should the default response or interpretation to crying be? It’s one thing to say ‘dynamic’ and another to determine what causes or justifies the majority of crying.

If there truly is no median, does dismissal become an acceptable default for tears?

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When I see a man cry, I have a powerful feeling from my chest to connect with them. A compassion. The connection helps define the source of the crying, and then secondary emotions/thoughts show up in response to the narrative present. 

There is something especially impactful seeing a man cry. I think validity is the wrong framework, but since men often work within this framework, tears can be especially expressive from someone who might otherwise try to avoid or naturally doesn’t relate to such emotions.

Edited 11 hours ago by yetineti

[Jirh]

@Natasha Tori Maru

Are you suggesting that crying in and of itself invokes an involuntary reaction within you? Like there isn't any thinking involved in the process?

I am suggesting that every emotional reaction has two components: thinking and feeling, but feeling comes first for women, and thinking first for men.

Of course this is a broad generalization. Everyone is unique. But if we look at humans from an energetic point of view, it could be possible that people with higher femininity tend to experience feelings first and people with higher masculinity thinking first.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

4 minutes ago, Jirh said:

@Natasha Tori Maru

Are you suggesting that crying in and of itself invokes an involuntary reaction within you? Like there isn't any thinking involved in the process?

It is SUCH a good question and often has me stumped. Often what I detect first depends more on where I place my awareness. This really became evident to me deep into a good routine meditation process.

Because for me? I honestly have a lot of trouble being able to even make a clean distinction between a feeling and a thought. I rest often with feelings being experienced coupled with a sensation, and thoughts less so.

I view feelings and thoughts as a codependent arising in my consciousness. 

My default is a thought. Less a feeling. In fact I often struggle with felt empathy. My brand of empathy is intellectual.

Overall I am unresolved.

[Carl-Richard]

38 minutes ago, Jirh said:

I am suggesting that every emotional reaction has two components: thinking and feeling, but feeling comes first for women, and thinking first for men.

You mean "comes first" as in temporally? EEG Event-Related Potential (ERP) research disproves this. Just the way the brain is structured disproves this. The cortex receives signals later than the limbic system in reaction to stimuli. The cascade is sensory stimulus -> limbic -> cortex.

Men are more likely to suppress emotional responses right after they happen (in the course of milliseconds); it just happens so fast and it's usually habitual (and ignoring or desensitizing that millisecond experience itself can also be habitual) so they might simply be completely unaware of it.

And of course, the repression doesn't really remove the emotion as much as it pushes it to the side. The signal still reached the cortex, it was just diverted and not given the right to flow in a particular way. And it leaves a lasting physiological arousal which now is more likely to be interpreted as anger (especially if the emotion occurred in a situation where you feel compelled to externalize some of the cause; "something happened and now I feel this arousal, I didn't like very much what happened and this thing out here was the cause and it must be dealt with, and now I'm angry". It's a very caveman type of circuitry).

Edited 9 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Carl-Richard killer contribution 

[yetineti]

@Carl-Richard

Perfecto.

[Carl-Richard]

8 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

@Carl-Richard killer contribution 

Killer >:) You give me that word after priming words like "anger". Mmmm.

Edited 9 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Natasha Tori Maru]

3 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Killer >:) You give me that word after priming words like "anger". Mmmm >:)

It was a co-creation' codependent arising! 

I must admit, I cycled through a few words prior to settling on "killer". 

Mostly because you "killed" the previous point. 

Like a savage. Fucken caveman style. Fatality.

Brutal.

Carnage.

Merciless.

Massacre.

Okay I should stop now.

FaTAliTY!

hue hue hue 

 

[Jirh]

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

It is SUCH a good question and often has me stumped. Often what I detect first depends more on where I place my awareness. This really became evident to me deep into a good routine meditation process.

Because for me? I honestly have a lot of trouble being able to even make a clean distinction between a feeling and a thought. I rest often with feelings being experienced coupled with a sensation, and thoughts less so.

I view feelings and thoughts as a codependent arising in my consciousness. 

For me, the distinction is very obvious. Thoughts are specific words that appear inside my bubble of experience. Feelings are ambiguous energies that are experienced in different parts of the body.

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My default is a thought. Less a feeling. In fact I often struggle with felt empathy. My brand of empathy is intellectual.

According to your reaction to crying, I don't think this is accurate.

1 hour ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Mostly because you "killed" the previous point. 

Actually, he didn't.

What he said doesn't really mean anything, because in practice that sequence only applies to simple immediate survival threats, but complex social cues don't work that way.

The limbic system is not responsible for conscious interpretation or processing complex context. It is responsible for memory and motivation and other low level functions, but seeing another person crying doesn't necessarily trigger the limbic system. In fact, it rarely does, especially without context.

Body language signals don't typically pass by the limbic system like say a loud sound like a gun fire. The meaning of body language is often ambiguous and requires conscious interpretation. The brain usually has to evaluate the context in the cortex first before the limbic system even knows whether to react with distress, empathy, or indifference. Without cortical interpretation, the stimulus lacks the social meaning required to trigger that emotional cascade in the first place.

So no point was made except that kneejerk reactions are felt before they're consciously evaluated, which is like common sense.

Edited 8 hours ago by Jirh

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Jirh it makes it all less certain. 

That's killing the knowing for me.

Also I'd appreciate you stop telling me what I think or feel. Especially through a generalised gender based lens. You may not mean it this way, but the rhetoric you use is received as if you are attempting to explain me without really relating.

Edited 8 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Jirh]

3 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

@Jirh it makes it all less certain. 

Not for me. I am still 100% sure that I think first, feel second.

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Also I'd appreciate you stop telling me what I think or feel. Especially through a generalised gender based lens. 

Fine.

But keep in mind that you are the one who questioned my sequence first. I stated that that's how it is for me and you pushed back. It's only fair that I did the same.

Edited 8 hours ago by Jirh

[Natasha Tori Maru]

3 minutes ago, Jirh said:

Not for me. I am still 100% sure that I think first, feel second.

Fine.

But keep in mind that you are the one who questioned my sequence first. I stated that that's how it is for me and you pushed back. It's only fair that I did the same.

I apologise if you felt I tried to mechanistically explain away your lived experience. My aim was to explore possible alternatives, not tell you how you are 🙏🏻

Edited 7 hours ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Jirh]

@Natasha Tori Maru

No problemo. I appreciate the dialogue.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Jirh same (⁠⊃⁠｡⁠•́⁠‿⁠•̀⁠｡⁠)⁠⊃

[Schizophonia]

18 hours ago, AION said:

What if she had nothing on

I'm making her a cup of tea of course, it's a difficult situation.

16 hours ago, meta_male said:

It depends on who it is.

I hope it's not your mom

[Monster Energy]

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Humans are children.

And yet, children are more conscious than the average adult. Funny how growing up doesn’t necessarily mean waking up.