
Crying - sinak
http://www.robinwe.is/explorations/cry.html
======
donatj
I am a big burly guy with a beard - and I get overwhelmed and cry regularly.
Not even from sadness, just from general emotion.

For example last night I watched the trailer for Overwatch[1] and got so
excited I started tearing up. I don't know why, anything that triggers ANY
sort of strong emotion in me brings it on. Always has.

My wife makes fun of me for it. I don't see anything wrong with it.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqnKB22pOC0)

~~~
lomnakkus
Since we all seem to be in a _sharing_ mood...

Also a guy -- no beard -- but (and I'm not joking here)... I watched that
exact trailer just now and teared up a little.

As for movies, I have two examples: Up (pure emotion) and The Fountain -- the
scene towards the end where he talks to the high priest and Clint Mansell's
music takes over.

For me, I think it's generally sort of really _EPIC_ things that do it. Really
huge _scales_ also tend to do it, for example some of the star size
comparisons, or David Deutsch's talk about relativistic jets[1], or just
contemplating the fact that some black holes swallow a solar mass _per day_.

Sometimes it's just "beauty", e.g. I couldn't help tearing up when Carolyn
Porco showed the "Saturn Eclipse"[2] picture in her Ted Talk[3]. Some of that,
I think, was because of the realization that _we humans_ had actually sent a
thing out there to take that picture.

(Btw, I think I'm generally considered a bit of a cold fish among my
friends/acquaintances, FWIW. Humans are weird.)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQliI_WGaGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQliI_WGaGk)

[2]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Saturn_e...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Saturn_eclipse.jpg)
(WARNING: Image is HUGE!)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usqdjsr6Vw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usqdjsr6Vw)
(I won't link you to the exact time because the video deserves to be seen its
entirety. If you _really_ want to skip, skip to 15m15s.)

~~~
notduncansmith
Another guy here.

I've found that as I age, I've become more emotional (and simultaneously
better at dealing with it). I never cried in movies as a child/teenager, but
nowadays I find myself choking up during particularly emotional moments in
movies, shows, and life. Sometimes I just look at my son for a minute and the
same thing happens. I try not to cry around people, even my family, but more
because I'm conscious of the effect it has on them (upsetting or, in the case
of other people, just awkward).

My theory is that, as I've developed a stronger sense of empathy and
experienced more things in my life, I have a more direct emotional connection
to events I witness. From what I've read based, this seems to be fairly
common.

~~~
ianmcgowan
That's a nice theory, but it seems to be common to get emotional with age -
senile lability if you want to google it.

My first introduction to the term as a teenager was in Earthly Powers[1].
Didn't get it then, but as I get older (and like you after kids), I find I
tear up at stories of sacrifice and generosity.

[1] [https://books.google.com/books?id=PsJyuYIL-
_MC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT...](https://books.google.com/books?id=PsJyuYIL-
_MC&pg=PT6&lpg=PT6&dq=senile+lability+anthony+burgess&source=bl&ots=kDDxb7XuFw&sig=HLU1AZ7jdGct0OAC4rtDtk9jNRk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwigpLaCj_vMAhVS2mMKHfZMDUIQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=senile%20lability%20anthony%20burgess&f=false)

[2]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=RRV0DbfOsqUC&pg=PA207&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=RRV0DbfOsqUC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=senile+lability&source=bl&ots=fA9OUjCSZk&sig=WTVmJqiRA2lzjiRWYuMJqIpCNv0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwib_IbJjvvMAhWFLmMKHS0QB9IQ6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q=senile%20lability&f=false)

~~~
kpil
I think there is a difference between senile decay, and the fact that when you
are getting older, you have witnessed the fragility of life in ways that most
teenagers luckily have not.

I think my empathy is growing as I'm getting older.

I am aware that some people just hardens up or getting more or less
traumatized if they experience really traumatic events or periods and I don't
think it is that useful to look at war-like events as it kind of go outside a
useful scale, but in personal tragedies a lot of people people seems to go
softer.

Maybe you have to learn empathy. There are many signs that says it's at least
partially so.

~~~
notduncansmith
Empathy definitely has to be exercised and trained regularly to work well. As
I understand it (not an expert but I've read up on it on the Internet),
children are pretty much incapable of it until ~4 as there's some mental
development necessary. If you spend lots of time in an environment where
you're not conscious of building your empathy and remembering to use it, your
ability and tendency to do so will wither.

------
Smaug123
For anyone else who was surprised, like me, that there was so much crying
recorded in this article, you might find [a certain Reddit thread][1]
interesting. I had been under the impression that basically no-one cried ever,
but it turns out that some hormones just seem to make it happen.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4g1pgu/serious_trans_people_of_reddit_what_was_something/)

~~~
avar
So the author of the article is a male -> female transsexual undergoing
hormone treatment?

~~~
Smaug123
I don't know, but prior probabilities suggest not. Notice, however, that it is
not just M2F transsexuals who have "female" hormones in their bodies. Almost
everyone has them, and some people (such as females) tend to have more of them
than others.

~~~
asymmetric
I'm intrigued by the "almost". Are there people with 0% female (or male)
hormones?

~~~
washadjeffmad
There are at least people with hormone insensitivity. An example is a
phenotypically female Olympic athlete with AIS[1] (had female sex organs) who
was chromosomally male (XY). It caused a bit of a controversy at the time.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome)

------
aantix
I'm really glad someone had the courage to share this data.. Growing up I was
always under the impression that it was wrong to cry, and it probably
exasperated some of my depressive episodes.

Strangely, after becoming a father, I feel like I'm even more sensitive and
can cry at the drop of a seemingly innocent comment. I bet I cry almost
daily.. But after it occurs, it's refreshing. I feel stronger.

~~~
jetcata
My family made me feel like crying was a bad thing, that it was weak to cry
and that there is something wrong with you. Never feel this way, anyone who
says or thinks this is really wrong, emotions are what make us human and we
should be glad to feel things!

------
SandersAK
This is awesome. I think so much study goes into anger management and trying
to understand why we get angry, but it seems that other emotional outburts are
often shunned in discussion.

As someone who comes from a family of people (read: Chinese and Southern) who
house an intense stigma around crying, it's been a struggle for me to better
empathize and understand crying for other people.

I think the author nailed the use of personal logging here - it's not about
extrapolating onto others, it's just another form of self-reflection.

------
tbabb
I had _no_ idea that people cry this much. It's like pulling back a curtain.

~~~
distances
Kind of the same for me. More baffling for me, however, is the range of
discrete emotions she was able to categorize. If I tried, I would probably end
up with buckets "upbeat", "fine", and "down".

I found this article very fascinating.

~~~
piyush_soni
If we go by the name (Robin), it's a he. :)

~~~
crymer11
Robin is a name used by both sexes, e.g. Robin Wright and Robin Williams.
Additionally, the author's website indicates they belonged to an organization
for women.

~~~
piyush_soni
Yeah, I just confirmed and came back here to write it. It's She. At the risk
of sounding sexist, that relieves me a bit :)

------
ohitsdom
Incredibly interesting, and waaaay more data than I expected. The fancy d3
weighted tree/forking chart was fascinating.

> I tried to categorize cries as they were happening (because I wanted to
> create a real-time crying dashboard)

Sure, who hasn't wanted to create a real-time crying dashboard?

~~~
tobyjsullivan
It's called a sankey diagram if that helps. And, yes, they are the coolest.

~~~
ohitsdom
That helps a lot, thanks! I've mostly used Highcharts but now am going to have
to dive into d3 to play around with some of this...

~~~
martgnz
It seems this was made with Google Charts.

[https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery...](https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/sankey)

~~~
ohitsdom
Hmm, I checked the source when originally reading it and thought I saw a d3
link but you are correct. Thanks for clarifying.

------
Jaruzel
I love this thread. I've been a long time HN lurker, but only fairly recently
did I create an account and start contributing.

See the honesty and emotion on these comments really makes me feel I'm hanging
out with a good bunch of people. It's so refreshing compared to the toxic
communities of the other large social sites.

I'm a cryer. I cry a lot, I'm also clinically depressed with social anxiety,
which makes social interaction difficult, so my emotional are mostly on the
surface anyway. Crying for me is the best form of emotional release. I cry at
the big ending in films, I cry at the end of amazing books (The Green Mile
totally destroyed me, I was in business class on a plane at the time,
blubbering my eyes out...).

On balance though, I also get very angry often. I guess you can't have one
without the other...

------
modoc
I almost never cry. Some of my friends joke that I cry once a decade, but
honestly that is pretty close to the truth. I'm not ashamed to cry, and I
don't try to not cry, or anything like that, I just almost never want to
cry...

~~~
elliotec
Same. I get called heartless for it sometimes. But I think I'm emotionally
stunted overall anyway.

------
chris_va
Long distance relationship, infidelity breakup, family illness, and bedbugs
all in a year? Yikes, glad they already had a therapist to speak with.

~~~
distances
I don't think the article mentioned bed bugs.

~~~
mroset
It's in the sankey diagram.

~~~
distances
You're right of course, that whole image failed to load for me on the first
visit. That's a beautiful visualization.

------
tjbiddle
Everyone is an emotional being; whether they show it to the world regularly or
not. I'm normally a very stoic, "serious", sometimes up-tight and irritable
person. I know I've turned off many people from the way I interact. But get me
in-front of someone I can truly connect with, and I'm a whole different soul -
I laugh, smile, my heart flutters, I'll cuddle up to a partner, the works. It
all depends how comfortable the other person makes me feel.

I'm very into personality typing and identify as INTJ for Myers Brigg (Which
is the smallest subset at ~1-2% of the population). I met a girl the other
week that I found out was INTJ as well and we connected instantly on a whole
new level - still blows my mind when I talk to her; and we were both able to
share that very quickly. But we're both very stoic and have our guards up in
public until we click well with someone and can relax.

------
howlingfantods
Fascinating dataset. I think ending a long term, long distance relationship
(and then finding out he was married all along), probabaly skewed this dataset
upwards.

Last time I cried was watching the most recent episode of Game of Thrones. And
then watching YouTube reaction videos of that episode, a little less crying
with each video. Hodor...

~~~
glibgil
I cried at the end of that episode because I hate puns

~~~
lukeschlather
At risk of spoilers, I don't think that's a pun. It's just an abbreviation.

~~~
glibgil
It's a pun played in meta-reverse and it sucked

~~~
djsumdog
No, there's no word play involved. There's no joke in their either. It's just
a misheard word.

------
Kluny
The data collection, analysis, and emotional honesty of this post are
extremely impressive.

------
greenspot
Disney movies.

Literally every single Disney movie gets me to cry. Usually towards the end,
around the climax when the soundtrack let the harps and violins kick in.

Not sure if it's me or Disney has some special Crying Department which
meticulously orchestrates a crying storyboard.

~~~
morgante
> Not sure if it's me or Disney has some special Crying Department which
> meticulously orchestrates a crying storyboard.

My money is on a Crying Department. The entire business of Disney is in
creating and exploiting emotions.

------
morgante
It's amazing how much variability there is in how much people cry. Also, the
intensity obviously varies a lot: I've never cried for longer than maybe 5
minutes.

Personally, I'm tempted to start a similar log but for the exact opposite
reason: I cry so little that I don't remember the last time I did, and I would
like to.

------
auganov
Since everyone is talking about their crying habits - I have this very
annoying tendency to get teary eyed/cry when having intense discussions with
some people. Especially if there's any hint of negativity in it. Awkward for
obvoius reasons. So I just tend to avoid these.

------
dfar1
The crying post is good, but also the rest of the website. Amazing amount of
data.

------
transpy
I dunno... I find the notion of crying as a reaction to fictional (or even
non-fictional) media... foreign. I find this notion foreign. (Man, just a
goatee, almost 33). I do consume fiction, but I just don't 'suspend
disbelief', as it is called. Call me a fiction grinch, but it's just the way
my brain works.

I recently changed jobs and moved to a new city. When, after a long hiring
process I was given the job, I cried a little (like 10 seconds), out of joy.
Then, once I arrived in the city, it was hard to find a new home but I faced
it without victimism: _I_ decided to move, so I had the obligation to face
whatever hardships would emerge along the way. But the day I finally found a
home and everything started to settle, when I finally had the keys, I sat down
on one of the rooms and, beer in hand, cried, but out of relief and joy also.

When I was younger I used to cry easily, but as I'm getting older I just don't
cry often anymore. Somewhat it has become a reaction reserved for existential
highlights, so to speak.

~~~
decisiveness
This is fascinating to me. Do you consume fiction purely for analyses of the
writing/acting? Of course, either of those things done poorly can quickly make
one focus on the fabricated nature of it, but to not have any real capacity to
entertain fantasy as reality when there are no obvious negatives or doubts to
point out seems to be a rare thing.

If you're unable to "suspend disbelief", what is the actual gain from that
experience if no engaged entertainment value is received? Does it only come
from being a so-called "grinch"?

~~~
transpy
I definitely prefer non-fiction. I do make an effort to connect with people
about current series/movies. But it is an _effort_ , not something
spontaneous. I feel bad sometimes that I can come across as too analytical.
I'm not! I feel awe and deep emotion looking at documentaries, for example, or
at the space station footage of the Earth. That is mind-blowing and very
moving.

I noticed this the other day talking to my brother. He was excited about a new
episode of House of Cards? I think. I watched it, it was cool. The
representation of all the forces and intrigues inside American politics.
Interesting! But then I tried to small talk, and said regarding the current
election (and I am not American, btw): 'You know, I think Hillary is as
corrupt as Sanders and Trump!'. He said with a blank face 'Oh sorry, I don't
really know about that'. I immediately felt the disconnect between us.

I follow American politics mainly through Stephen Colbert and other comedians;
I'm not _too_ analytical and dry as to just read serious journals or political
books: I like entertainment, but entertainment that _contains_ at least a
little bit of information about reality. I just can't spend a weekend watching
a fictional series when I could be learning something about the real state of
affairs, even superficially.

And I just don't want to judge people that like to do that, I even consider it
as the normal, balanced thing to do. But I do feel how other people judge me
for my preferences of entertainment, but I just can't help it.

~~~
jacobush
Fiction can help you learn meta stuff.

~~~
transpy
No doubt about it. My background is in the humanities! I started out working
for a literature magazine and going to college to study philosophy. Then my
brain wandered and decided that it wanted to learn about programming, machine
translation and related stuff. I _do_ like and value fiction, and you're
right: fiction can give you 'big picture' ideas, metaphors and can shape the
meaning of our whole experience.

------
jetcata
This is super interesting, I've found that as I've aged I cry a lot less than
when I was younger. If gender makes any difference, I'm a woman. I found that
when I was younger I cried a lot, at all sort of things. Now I find it
difficult to cry, and I kind of miss that emotion, because I think it's an
important part of what makes us human :(

------
jaytaylor
Can anyone explain how the visualization with the header '? -> ?? -> ???' (a
little past the middle on the right hand side) was generated?

I'd really like to know how spreadsheet data gets turned into that awesome D3
diagram!

~~~
danielvinson
[https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery...](https://developers.google.com/chart/interactive/docs/gallery/sankey#overview)

------
ghoul2
This is _so_ well done!

Could you talk about how you kept track of this when you were away from your
computer? Any app etc? did you make a record right then? or just a mental note
and then trancribed later?

I apologize for focusing on the logistics part of it :-)

------
soneca
My crying is triggered by positive stories. Most of the times, specifically by
solidarity demonstrations.

Sports, natural disasters, simple day-to-day actions. Whenever i feel there is
real and genuine altruism.

I rarely cry by sad or melancholy reasons.

------
SeanCrawford
I read somewhere the author of Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein, wrote that
when he realized he couldn't cry he took steps to learn to do so. I am a man
still learning.

In my self help group for recovery from abuse even some of the women could not
cry. We thought this was from bigger people saying, "If you don't stop crying
I'll give you something to cry about" and also we thought they were bloody
liars, unable to admit to us that our crying upset them and they didn't want
to feel (just as they took substances to avoid feeling)

------
Zelphyr
So many people here admitting they cry with an undertone that they feel
various levels of bad for doing it. @donatj even said his wife makes fun of
him when he cries.

We have got to make this a non-issue. Its so insane to me that in Western
culture someone isn't allowed to express a perfectly normal aspect of their
physiology. Its like shaming someone for puking. It may not be pleasant but
not doing it is way worse.

I sincerely believe we should be pushing back and HARD when we're shamed for
crying. "We" being anyone because, lets face it, women are shamed for it too.

~~~
brador
Maybe crying is seen as an intense emotion for rare occasions so when someone
seems to be crying every weekday or over trivial things it demeans the
powerfulness and impact of crying.

Also because of it's reservation for truly impactful events random crying can
seem fake or artificial. 'Attention whoring' as the kids like to call it.

You cry at a funeral, you cry at getting a parking ticket. If you cry at both
you're kinda putting them on the same level eh?

~~~
Zelphyr
Sure, there are attention whores but the existence of an outlier of people
doesn't seem to me to be a very good reason to shame most people for something
that our bodies are designed to do.

The parking ticket thing reminds me of a teenager I worked with once who got a
speeding ticket. He started getting really choked up about it. To your point,
was it really a big deal? So he got a speeding ticket. He should put his big-
boy pants on, pay it and move on, right? Except, what we found out later was
that he was crying because he knew what his abusive father was going to do
when he got home.

So yeah, sometimes they are on the same level. Context matters.

~~~
facetube
This. I'm a grown-ass adult and cried when my father left after visiting. Was
it because I was too much of a wimp to be alone and needed my parents? No. It
was the shock of having seen someone I'd known my whole life age noticeably, a
feeling of simultaneous concern and powerlessness over an array of health
concerns, and anticipatory grief centered around the certainty that he will
one day die and we both will experience incredible pain as a result.

------
iandanforth
If this began happening to me I would consider it a serious medical issue.
Crying on a daily basis? That seems debilitating.

------
projektfu
Looking at the "heat map", it looks like the OP needs to start going to bed on
time, like 10pm, on a regular basis. It seems she is staying up late and
crying a lot during that time, perhaps because emotional things and overwork
are getting her at that time. Put the phone on Do Not Disturb and check out at
10pm.

~~~
gk1
Or the opposite: She was already feeling those things and could not go to
sleep because of them.

------
NTDF9
What a great study! We engineers and rational-thinking oriented people tend to
disregard how our emotions affect us on a daily basis.

Makes me wonder... Would I want a emotion tracker (app or hardware) which lets
me study ME? Yes

Do I want it in the cloud or to be made money from? Not at all. An opening up
of emotions opens me up to a lot of abuse.

------
louprado
During allergy season my eyes are always on the verge of tearing up. Then even
mildly enthusiastic conversations will cause my eyes to fully tear and that
makes me feel emotional. It is embarrassing and often leads me to abruptly end
conversations.

There have been numerous studies where facial expressions can affect emotion.
It is a positive feedback loop [1]. The situation I described above isn't a
facial expression per se, but does anyone else feels like eye strain or
irritants (soldering?), makes them more emotional.

[1] [http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/04/16/botox-
may...](http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/04/16/botox-may-diminish-
the-experience-of-emotions/)

------
_audakel
i read this and sent my wife a link. she wanted to know why i was analyzing
her crying. i told her i just wanted to run a neuralnet on her crying
data.....

[http://i.imgur.com/NE380tW.png](http://i.imgur.com/NE380tW.png)

~~~
Zelphyr
Weirdest save I've ever seen dude. Kudos. :)

------
sharp11
This is such a wonderful blending of genres. We techies often can seem (or
be?) detached from emotion. The rigor with which analytics were applied here
("real-time crying dashboard"!) is genius. So funny and so true.

------
therealdrag0
I don't cry often. But a common types of cry I have is in narratives when
someone achieves something.

For example, I cried reading The Devil in the White City when the Ferris wheel
started moving for the first time.

------
agumonkey
Weird anecdote. Grief can lead to health damaging anger, when sometimes you
need to cry. Pardon the metaphor but it really feels like leaking the pain out
instead of keeping it rotting inside your head.

------
djhworld
I haven't cried for years, and I don't wear that as a badge of honour either,
it's just never been a thing for me.

I've had the 'lump in the throat' moments, sure, but not breached the wall to
have the dam burst in quite some time. In fact I think the last time I
properly cried was when my dog was euthanised and that was 12 or so years ago.
That was the first time I'd seen my Dad completely broken too.

------
burnguy123
Is anywhere near this amount of crying normal? I have never tracked but I
would suspect it would be more like 1x every year or two if we remove
allergies.

~~~
mjb394
It really depends on the person, the culture and family they grew up in, their
physiology, etc. For me, one of my primary reactions to anxiety and stress (or
especially the feeling of release once a stressor event is over) is crying, so
that's at least a couple of times a month. Some people just get overwhelmed
with emotion (not necessarily sadness, any type will do) or have found crying
to be a useful physical reaction because of the hormones that get released and
the often cathartic feeling of being able to express your emotional state,
even in private to yourself.

------
novia
Hey, girls cry more (typically) than guys.

As noted in the article, different people have different sensitivity levels
that their emotions must meet before the waterworks start. Just because you
cry less than the author does not mean that her amount of crying is abnormal.

Personally, I cry just as much as her if not more.

------
Jean-Philipe
For me, crying was mostly related to lack of eating and working out, lack of
sleep or from too much work. The triggers were real, relationship problems,
work related issues, you name it. But as long as I eat well and work out, I
can take on a lot of personal problems without crying.

------
nice_byte
Holy wow, I am genuinely surprised. I would never have imagined that it's
possible for grown-up people to cry more than one or two times per year, let
alone cry enough times to gather stats about it!

------
partiallypro
I cry, maybe 3 times a year, and tear up maybe 10 times a year. Last year was
really rough, so it was a bit more, but I have no idea how someone could cry
-that- much and still have a livable life.

------
kpwagner
Well executed analysis. It takes real commitment to follow through and track
these results, then actually do something with the data. Better than a lot of
TEDx talks I've seen lately.

------
pmiller2
I've had a lot of 3's and 4's, and a couple of 5's in the past year. It's been
rough. :(

------
_RPM
After staying up for 3 days straight coding with caffeine, I had a cry spell.
It was like a religious experience.

------
gadders
I think I have cried twice in ten years. I don't cry if possible, and
certainly not in public.

------
geedzmo
Go Cats

------
Xcelerate
Edit: I have retracted this post; it came across in a way that I did not
intend it to. Thank you to those of you who explained the response I received.

~~~
Xcelerate
Why the downvotes? Did you all read the entirety of my post? As someone who
almost never receives downvotes on HN, this is frustrating. Please provide
constructive criticism rather than leaving me in the dark.

~~~
unimpressive
Because people who try to diagnose other people with disorders out of the DSM
over the Internet after a brief interaction with their life are generally
considered to be in a state of arrogance.

------
imaginenore
> _I 've always considered myself to be a bit of a crybaby_

No, that's some ridiculous amount of crying. I wonder if it's severe
depression or Pseudobulbar affect or some hormonal disorder.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudobulbar_affect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudobulbar_affect)

~~~
glibgil
The crying is associated with relatable emotions. The fact that crying is so
routine for them is probably a little neurotic (in a clinical sense, not in a
pejorative sense). The person is probably a good candidate for some Cognitive
Behavior Therapy (CBT) or Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). That can
be useful to challenge some of the narratives that we tell ourselves and
others when we think of things that make us sad.

For example, we might think of a breakup and say to ourselves, "I put two
years into this relationship and now I've been dumped. Everyone is going to
know that Sarah doesn't want to be with me anymore. What's worse is I wasted
all this time only to breakup and be further behind in my relationship goals.
I miss Sarah. This is awful." Those types of thoughts are natural and can
certainly make you cry

CBT or REBT teaches you to challenge those assumptions. "This is not awful.
This is merely inconvenient. I'd rather be sleeping next to Sarah tonight, but
I was single for eight months before I met her and I can certainly sleep alone
(even though I'd rather not). I wish Sarah still wanted to spend time with me,
but I can't change the fact that she does not. We got along pretty well for
much of the time and everyone knows that. People breakup all the time and my
friends will understand that we gave it a good try. I would like to meet
someone soon so that I am not alone, but I've learned that I can be reasonably
happy alone for long periods of time"

~~~
ksenzee
She's already in therapy, which accounts for a lot of the crying. And I think
finding out your partner is married to someone else would cause a lot of
crying in anyone who's otherwise emotionally healthy.

------
MicroBerto
Notice how many cries are due to relationship-based issues.

You are putting yourself at serious emotional risk if you allow your happiness
to be driven by another person, regardless of who it is.

IMHO, your emotional success should be based upon things you can control, and
if it's not, then you need to make more rapid decisions as to who or what is
allowed to take part in your life.

~~~
marcusestes
So your recipe for, "emotional success" is to not be affected by other people?

Got it.

~~~
rarec
Is it really wrong though? Making your emotional state dependent on others is
a terrible thing to do to yourself, because people can be fickle and change.
Emotional independence is tremendously helpful for emotional well-being.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will
certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping
it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it
carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements;
lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that
casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be
broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The
alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The
only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers
and perturbations of love is Hell."

\- C.S. Lewis, _The Four Loves_

Yeah, you can get hurt. For sure, be wise about who you become emotionally
dependent on. But not having your emotions entangled with another's is to miss
one of the great joys of being alive.

~~~
ohyesyes
I've experienced that "great joy" too many times. For some people, the harm is
a lot more than the good... you get used to the good quickly, but it takes a
lot more time to get used to the harm.

