While women have traditionally been seen as the more emotional sex, many Irish men are becoming more comfortable showing their feelings. RÓISÍN INGLEasks some men when they last cried and why?
GAZZA DID it. Fox News talkshow host Glen Beck is always at it. And Don Draper from Mad Mendoes it with typical panache. Crying men were back on the agenda last week after it appeared that Trevor Sargent TD had been seen on news bulletins with tears rolling down his face while sitting behind his leader John Gormley at that tumultuous Green Party press conference.
“Is Trevor Sargent actually CRYING?!” was a typical response.
As it turned out, the streaming eyes were caused by what Sargent describes as “lingering symptoms of man flu” but the Green TD is not averse to a good cry.
“Men are capable of the same range of emotions as women and there is a certain emotional relief that goes with crying, and laughter too,” he says. He reckons the last time he actually did cry in public might have been at a Des Bishop comedy gig.
“I can safely say I was among a large number of men (and women) with tears of laughter running down their faces,” he says.
We spoke to some other men about when they last cried and why.
William Jenkins, 76, retired
The last time I really cried properly was after my mother's funeral. I didn't cry when I heard the news of her death and I didn't cry during the funeral itself. The tears came later when someone put on one of my Mother's records, Glen Campbell's Reason to Believe. That's when the dam burst and it all came out like a leaking bucket. I didn't stop until my sister came across to comfort me.
I had another moment a couple of years ago when I saw a very emaciated man in the centre of town. I didn’t stand there bawling, but I felt so bad for him that tears came to my eyes. I’m soft like that. I walked on by to disguise what was happening but then later I regretted not stopping to give him money.
I don’t buy into that macho stuff about men not crying. I’ve seen men bigger than me crying looking at their children on stage in a school play.
I was made redundant three times in my life, all after periods of long employment. I’ve seen many men in tears leaving the factory gates – being made redundant especially after long service gives you this yawning sense of betrayal, like your girlfriend has given you the bullet. I never cried leaving the factory, I was just always very angry in those situations.
Paul Howard, 40, author of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly
Ronnie Drew singing Noraalways makes me cry. I was in the car listening to a playlist a few months ago and it came on unexpectedly. I thought "Oh, this song always makes me sad" and then he sang the line "Our dreams they have never come true, Nora/ Our hopes they were never to be", and I was off again. I don't know what it is, just the combination of the lyrics and Drew's incredible voice. Maybe it's the sentiment that the couple in the song had all these life plans which never happened but in the end the plans were irrelevant, the only thing that mattered was their love for each other.
I wasn’t much of a crier in my teens and 20s but I notice as I get older I am affected by things more. I was very upset by the London bombings and recently when I heard about Michaela McAreavy’s death, it made me a bit weepy. Boys are taught from an early age in our culture that you reach a certain age and you stop crying about things. It’s probably a good thing, otherwise we’d all be going around bawling our eyes out.
Martin O’Boyle, 34, student
A friend of mine who lives in Canada is very sick at the moment with cancer. He was supposed to come home at Christmas but because his condition had worsened he wasn’t able to and that was the last time I cried. I was on the phone to him, it wasn’t hysterical crying, I was just very sad.
The last time I probably really lost it was 10 years ago after myself and a friend, a girl, were attacked walking down the street in Dublin one night. It turned pretty nasty. My friend didn’t cry, she was just angry, but afterwards in front of the gardaí and a few of my other friends I just couldn’t stop crying, I was a mess. I think it must have been the shock.
When I was at school – an all-boys school – I was a little bit of a cry baby and I remember being told to cop on numerous times, which made me more conscious that it wasn’t the thing to do. I definitely remember being able to cry a lot more when I was younger. I don’t cry very often now, I wish I could. I know it’s probably very cathartic.
Liam Corcoran, 19, student
I’d say the last time I cried was four years ago. I had just heard that a friend in my class killed himself. I was at home in tears so it wasn’t in front of anybody. By the time I got back into school, it was a day or two later and people had come to terms a bit more with what had happened. It was such a massive shock.
I suppose I haven’t had much reason to cry since that happened. When I was younger it was a nice use of power, a way you could get something you wanted from your parents. You grow out of that fairly quickly, once you go into secondary school.
I think there’s better things to do in life than cry and thankfully I haven’t had much reason to.
Frank Byrne, 44, semi-state employee
I am ashamed to say the last time I cried was watching The Notebookover Christmas. It's a sad movie about an older couple looking back over their younger days. It wasn't an uncontrollable meltdown but a tear or two definitely escaped. I've also been known to cry during programmes like X Factor. I tend to champion the underdog. I'd be willing someone to be brilliant and then I'd go into floods, real Noah's Ark stuff.
The funny thing is I can’t remember the last time I cried because of a real-life event. I’ve had a few very emotionally charged episodes in the past 10 years, parental deaths – one of which was extremely traumatic – meeting up for the first time with my birth mother and also finding a half-sister I never knew existed. None of these events made me cry.
I am quite sensitive and tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. I don’t believe in stiff upper lip nonsense so it’s not as though I am deliberately keeping it in. It might be that the pent-up emotions get released at other times but that is for my therapist to decide!
Robin Webster, 73, chief executive of Age Action Ireland
I last cried over the death of a very close friend. I’d known him since the age of eight and he died very suddenly so I didn’t get to say goodbye properly to him. I speak to his widow quite often on the phone and I cry with her about it and at the memory of him.
I also cry at the birth of grandchildren and at reunions. It’s poignant seeing people after a long time. These are tears of joy.
Maybe I am just terribly sentimental. I went to boarding school in England as a child, where crying was probably a sign of weakness. A lot of crying did go on, from loneliness, but it was mostly done in private. I don’t believe in this kind of muscular Christianity that a man needs to be strong and not show emotion. My father, I still call him my Daddy, was never stern or unapproachable – he was a comforter, a supporter. I would have seen him cry when I was growing up, so perhaps that influenced me.
Ian Dempsey, 50, broadcaster, Today FM
I am a northsider. We don’t really cry on the northside. Having said that, recently I enjoyed a milestone birthday – I turned 50 – and at the end of my show, the door to the studio opened to reveal several members of my family who were there to surprise me.
Listening back to the tape of the show, you can hear a kind of involuntary yelp in my voice when I realised what was happening, a bit of a cry. Thank God it wasn’t television so nobody else could see me.
I would have seen myself as a bit of a hard man but I still thought I would cry when my children were born. I didn’t cry when my son arrived, so I thought if the next one’s a girl, I will probably cry, but I didn’t cry then either. In the last few years, I’ve become more emotional. It could be a moment on telly, say during Friends, and you would feel yourself filling up.
The ultimate cliche is that boys don’t cry. You would be called a girly type if you cried with your mates, so you always tried to grin and bear it, keep that stiff upper lip. Thing is, the older I get, the more that stiff upper lip seems to be wobbling.
