“Women cry more, therefore they are weaker.”

Many people believe that women are the “weaker” or “softer” of the two sexes because they cry more on average. I have been thinking about this hypothesis and my own experiences and have come up with this conclusion:

First of all, one needs to make a distinction between the amount of tears one sheds and the strength they possess. One’s tendency to cry actually tells us very little about their strength. What determines their strength is the method used to deal with the problem at hand, which obviously, can be executed identically by a person who cried and a person who did not.

As far as I can tell, tears are just the body’s immediate way to shed some stress hormones. It is necessary for the body to do so in order to allow the brain to clear itself and consider future advances to deal with the problem. An average woman may cry more than an average man, but she probably punches fewer walls than him too. The body always has to find some way to release stress that has built up. Everyone finds their own way to shed it.

I can say so with confidence because I have experienced many ways of stress release myself. Without any medicines in my body, I tend to steer toward the “male” side of the spectrum. When I am entirely myself, I will go without crying for a year or longer, which is quite the stretch for an average female. But this does not mean that I don’t experience stress or that it doesn’t actually have a physical affect on me. It does. I may not cry but I feel definite uneasiness in my stomach and many times feel the need/actually do vomit. It’s just another way for the body to release. And when I am on medicines that throw any balance my body had out the window, I will cry for no reason at all, sometimes with very few breaks throughout a whole day.  It is just my body doing what it has to do. It doesn’t make me any weaker than the person I was without medicines and it definitely doesn’t change how I tackle stress. It just tells me that the stars have aligned in such a way to determine this as my stress relief.

So, I am not here to tell you that every woman is a super-woman and will tackle all problems like Chuck Norris. I am just hoping to open your mind. Judge a person’s strength by their ability to deal with what life throws at them, not how often you hear them sob. And honestly, even though it may not come to you naturally, a good cry releases a lot of much-appreciated endorphins. Next time you feel your eyes well up, go for it.