I understand that. I'm speaking on my own experience. I can't speak on yours or anybody else's.

My husband is the same way. He verbally expresses sadness and grief, but he hardly ever cries. Not that he's ashamed or embarrassed to. He just doesn't. The average man cries between 6 and 17 times in a year, compared to between 30 and 64 times a year for the average woman. My husband cried once, 12 years ago, and that's it. Unless there are times I don't know about, but again, it's not that he's embarrassed. He just doesn't do it. For him, that's not unhealthy, because he does verbally express his sadness. He tells me when he starts missing his grandmother, for example.

Early in our marriage, I thought Hubby's abusive father had traumatized his ability to cry out of him, as I had been conditioned in my own childhood not to cry. After he sat in on some of my therapy sessions with me, my therapist had learned enough to explain it to me. "His father didn't abuse him for crying. His father abused him for existing." We came to the conclusion that *maybe* my husband *might* be a little repressed, but it's no big deal. Not like my own repression was for me.

By contrast, I've been in relationships before him with men who cried more often than I did, and by then I had regained the ability. It used to really freak me out when we were first together. If my husband doesn't openly show his emotions, how am I supposed to know when he needs my comfort and support? Answer turned out to be: He'll tell me.