Sorry for the long preamble, just trying to paint a picture for you all, TIA for reading, apologies if it’s an incoherent mess it’s currently 2AM by me.
I don’t know what to do but it’s making me feel less and less emotionally safe with him. I have always been very sensitive and cry easily. However when I cry it is never obnoxious. I feel like this is important info— I could understand being annoyed if I was the kind of crier who howls and blubbers and is completely inconsolable for hours and hours but I’m not. When I cry it’s just tears streaming down my face, if I’m crying “hard” then you’ll hear me sniffle and an occasional sob, but never loud, screaming, obnoxious. And it only lasts a few minutes. It’s just how I process my emotions sometimes. Believe me I’ve tried to tell myself “no more crying” so many times, I was often yelled at for crying as a kid. So I feel like in some way me crying is just inherent to me because despite growing up that way I still cry easily. My boyfriend was raised in a “boys don’t cry” household and has said that crying makes him uncomfortable because of that mindset he was raised in, which I completely understand and empathize with. He used to be more understanding of me crying and would say that the ability to feel and be vulnerable and cry like I do is a beautiful thing, now lately he just gets annoyed. I can admit I sometimes tear up and cry at things that most may find not that big of a deal or even a bit silly, and honest to god I’m trying to be better, but even if I have a valid (for example, a health scare with my special needs cat earlier this week) reason he still gets annoyed and it’s palpable. He doesn’t get angry or yell, but he does tell me to stop and tends to invalidate my feelings, which hurts and upsets me even more. What grinds my gears most is when he says to just stop and think logically, or that logically I have no reason to cry. It’s not about logic, it feels like he’s demeaning me and my intelligence and feeding into the whole “women are emotional, illogical, overdramatic beings” rhetoric. Humans are both logical and emotional, and I think compartmentalizing your feelings under the guise of approaching a situation with logic or reasoning is just as, if not more unhealthy than collapsing into a screaming, crying, wailing mess every time something goes wrong. I’m also the type to start to cry if I feel bad for doing something and it causes a little spat or argument. Crying in these situations seems to annoy him the most and he tells me to just talk and ask questions instead of resorting to tears. I’m not crying necessarily because I’m assuming his feelings, but because I feel bad for doing something that has the potential to hurt him or cause a rift. And it’s hard to speak because my brain is in overdrive trying to calm myself so I often can’t form any meaningful thought, which makes it hard when we’re having a spat or argument and I’ve started to choke up or cry. I explained this to him tonight and he said he understood the logic of what I was saying, but he was still annoyed and I don’t understand why after I explained this. Sometimes it feels like I’m wrong or being punished for being empathetic and emotionally vulnerable.
My question is why do so many men react this way when their woman cries, and how do I talk to him about this? Every time I do it always comes back to the whole “think logically” argument. How do I explain that that mindset is no better and that just because I’m crying doesn’t mean I can’t also see things with reason. I guess if you have any tips on crying less that would be appreciated too.
TLDR, boyfriend gets annoyed when I cry and says I need to think more logically instead, how do I get him to be more understanding?