Did anyone else grow up hearing, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about”?
That sentence, or some softer version of it, taught many of us an early and lasting lesson: when you have an emotion, especially as a man, don’t show it.
We learned to become the people who say, “I’m fine. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to make a big thing out of it.” We hold it together. We don’t want anyone worrying about us. Sometimes, we even feel embarrassed when the tears come anyway.
For a long time, I thought this meant I was good at handling my emotions. It took me years, especially in my relationships, to realize that I wasn’t necessarily good at handling them. I was just good at containing them.
There is a quiet but profound difference between learning to process and regulate a feeling and learning to suppress it.
One says, “I’m feeling something. I can allow myself to feel it, understand it, and decide what to do with it.”
The other says, “I’m feeling something, but nobody can know.”
Some of us were taught to stop crying long before we were ever taught what to do with our sadness. We carry that lesson for years, sometimes decades, and without realizing it, we can pass it on to the people we love.
Today, the language is often gentler.
“Don’t be upset. You’ll be okay.”
“It’s not worth crying over.”
“Don’t let it bother you.”
And while these words are usually meant with love, the underlying message can still be the same: make the feeling disappear.
We say these things because we care. When we see someone hurting, our instinct is often to make the pain stop.
But that same discomfort that once made us hide our own emotions can show up when someone we love is struggling.
Have you ever started telling someone about a problem, only for them to jump in before you even finished?
“You need to leave that relationship.”
“You need to talk to your boss.”
“Here’s what I would do.”
And you’re sitting there thinking, I didn’t ask you to fix this. I just wanted you to listen.
There is a reason people do this.
Someone else’s pain can make us uncomfortable. We care about them, we see them hurting, and suddenly we are faced with something most of us find difficult to sit with: the feeling that there may be nothing we can do to make it better.
So we reach for advice.
The moment we have a solution to offer, we feel a little less helpless. In trying to make someone else feel better, we may also be trying to make ourselves feel better.
Most of the time, it comes from love.
But there is another way to love someone, and it can be much harder.
Let the feeling exist.
Let someone say, “I’m really struggling right now,” without immediately explaining why everything will be okay.
Let someone say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” without immediately telling them what they should do.
Let someone be sad without requiring them to become happy before they are ready.
Sometimes, people don’t need an answer. They need a place where they can finally say what hurts without feeling like they have to clean up the emotion before they are allowed to leave.
Because in our rush to erase someone’s pain, we can accidentally make them feel like their pain is something they should not have felt in the first place.
It is easy to notice when other people do this to us. It is much harder to notice when we do it ourselves.
Think about the last time someone you love came to you hurting.
Did you listen, or did you immediately try to make the pain go away?
Breaking this pattern does not require blaming the generation before us. Many of our parents were taught the same things. They were doing what they believed was right with what they had learned.
We can simply choose something different.
You do not have to stop feeling in order to be okay.
And the people you love do not have to be okay for you to stay beside them.
Sometimes, the most loving thing we can offer ourselves and the people we care about is not an answer, a solution, or a way out.
Sometimes, it is simply the quiet safety of being allowed to feel.
