A woman crying elicits sympathy – even if, à la Rachel from Accounts, she is some kind of nightmare soap-opera figure from the suburbs of south London. When a woman we do not know bursts into tears in public our gut reaction is to assume she must have a good reason for doing so. She has, until proven otherwise, right on her side.
And even if she does not, it does not usually matter. She may be wrong in terms of the rational truth, but she is right instinctively. Otherwise she would not have cried – would she?
Let us be clear: women often cry, men rarely do. I speak from experience. I live with an Italian wife and our three disco-age daughters. We have three boys as well, but there is no doubt that it is the four femmine who rule the roost in Casa Farrell. The weapons they deploy to maintain ground and air supremacy include fever-pitch shouting – which might, come to think of it, have more to do with their being Italian than being women – and crying, which, I must say, does sometimes seem manufactured rather than genuine.
I try to shout back, but decades of smoking and drinking to excess make it difficult except in short bursts – which they ruthlessly shoot to pieces. The boys, of course, back the women – though the eldest, Francesco Winston, 19, is beginning to show signs that perhaps Papà is not wrong about everything.
As for crying, I cannot remember when sadness last caused me tears. I did not even cry at my mother’s funeral – after I had come back from Italy in 1982, aged 23, to live with her for a year as she slowly died at 50. I am proud that I was with her, but feel a failure nonetheless because her death did not make me cry. Indeed, I envy those who can cry.
Occasionally I do shed tears of… what? Love? Joy? For instance, when I watch our middle daughter, Magdalena, 17, playing her viola in the orchestra at her music school.
In the case of Rachel Reeves, we may eventually find out why she cried during Prime Minister’s Questions – whether due to what her office described as ‘a personal matter’, which she refuses to explain, or as the result of a breaking-point row involving her and Starmer and their disastrous government. But as a friend who is an Old Bailey judge told me on the phone: ‘People in certain positions, regardless of their sex, cannot be allowed to burst into tears. Imagine if I did that in open court in my wig and gown.’
The Chancellor’s tears will harm, not help, her. But for women in general – especially in private – it is different. Female tears, whether fake or genuine, can have the persuasive force of a punch. I try to avoid provoking them. But this often means accepting defeat.
Earlier this week, there was a classic example chez nous when I foolishly tried to get Caterina to move the contents of her wardrobe off the floor and back into the wardrobe. Amazingly, she agreed – which I took as a good omen – and I offered to give her a hand. I had a fleeting vision of father and daughter, a team, working together to sort out a problem. But whereas she just wanted to chuck the lot into the wardrobe willy-nilly, I wanted a more structured solution. We rowed, I called her a ‘cretina’, and she burst into tears and stomped off into the garden in the direction of the donkey.
Female tears, whether fake or genuine, can have the persuasive force of a punch
I remember her eyes as she looked into mine with – what was the emotion? Love? Hate? Calculation? – for what seemed like a full second before the tears began. It is times like this when I feel: ‘Yes, it really is true, I am a total shit.’ We did not speak for a day or so. In the end, I sent her a WhatsApp message saying: ‘I’m sorry I shouted at you. Please forgive me.’ She accepted my apology.
Obviously, no one had taken my side – except Francesco Winston, but only in private. He told me: ‘She’s such a manipulatrice! Is she offended you called her a cretina? Forget it!’ I was right in one straightforward sense but wrong overall – because otherwise she would not have burst into tears, would she?
Men cannot win in these situations when they are the ones whose words or behaviour cause a woman to cry. The best strategy is to recognise potentially tear-inducing issues and avoid driving them to boiling point. Failing that, the only remedy is a no-holds-barred ‘I am sorry’ apology – even if that is not what you feel – not an ‘I am sorry if’ one. You can always refuse to concede any error on your part and sit it out. Like a real man! But is that what real men do?
There are times, though, when men really must stand up to women who cry. Years ago, I was on a paper with a young woman who would later become famous. She went off to the Third World to speak to workers paid a pittance to make ethnically sound beauty products for a famous global brand. When she came back, everyone said what a fantastic story she had got. In truth, it was obvious that – this being the Third World – the local wage rate was bound to be a pittance. So what was the big deal? I told her so in the newsroom. She burst into tears. Everyone thought I was a nasty, envious little shit. I apologised. But I wish I had not. I regret it to this day.
How many times have male colleagues said similar or worse things to me about one of my stories? And if I had burst into tears, what would their reaction have been? But then again, I cannot even burst into tears – even if I want to.
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