Last week I was sitting on a plane travelling to the United States when I began to cry. I was watching the movie Captain Phillips, a compelling piece of work starring Tom Hanks, arguably the best actor in the world. Towards the end of the movie when he is rescued, the emotional relief he shows is truly spellbinding. That’s what got me. I got up from my seat and went to the bathroom to wipe away my tears. You can just imagine how I tried to be discreet in front of other passengers. I didn’t want them to see me crying. I am a man, after all. And men don’t cry, do they? Well the answer is we do and we should not be afraid to cry more.

We should not be afraid to show our emotions in times of crisis, sadness, elation or happiness. Ironically, when I returned to my seat, I read an interview with my old pal Seán Bán Breathnach. SBB famously cried while commentating on Katie Taylor’s Olympic final success. And in the interview he referred to this and how he is inclined to cry more or less at the drop of a hat. It made me feel a little bit better, that it is okay to be a grown man and openly show emotion like this.

Soccer pundit Johnny Giles doesn’t agree. He recently derided Premier League players like John Terry and Luis Suarez for crying on TV, suggesting that it was a sort of fashion statement playing to the cameras and that it didn’t happen in his day. Of course it didn’t happen in his day. Men of the 20th century didn’t cry. It was a sure sign of weakness.

ADVERTISEMENT

Has anyone ever seen their dad cry, for instance? Not many, I’d say. Quite what Giles made of his sparring partner Eamon Dunphy crying some time back on The Late Late Show, I am not sure.

If memory serves me right, Dunphy’s tears were brought on by a discussion about the recession. And indeed the recession has given reason for many of us to cry and be emotional. But how many men in particular are hurting inside, afraid to let go of the emotion and stress of losing a job or not being able to pay the mortgage? And what is that clamming up doing to their minds in the long run? It surely cannot be good to clam up.

In these tough times when suicide particularly among young men is such a problem in this country, men should be encouraged to open up about their inner feelings, their emotions. Emotional torment should not be suppressed and it shouldn’t be seen as a sign of weakness or vulnerability for a man to turn to his wife or his family and release any inner feelings of sadness or distress. Yet my immediate reaction to the tears streaming down my face 35,000 feet in the air last Saturday was: “Oh gosh, I hope nobody can see me.”

It’s not the first time I have shed tears as a grown man. I have had many reasons to be emotional over the years. And I am singling out men here because women are way ahead of us in dealing and coping with pressure and emotion.

Women are more inclined to talk to others about their problems and stresses. As I said earlier, it’s unlikely most of us have seen our dads cry but likely that we have seen our mothers or our sisters cry.

It’s time that we accepted that us men have emotions too and we shouldn’t be afraid to show them.