Is it OK for women to cry at work?

Why is crying in the workplace such a highly discussed topic for women? Scientifically speaking, prolactin and smaller tear ducts make women more prone to crying. Tune in to learn more, including strategies for managing emotions in the workplace.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from House stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. Caroline, I'm surprised we have not
talked about this issue sooner because you and I are
always just weeping in the office constantly. It's a play.

(00:25):
We've got a box of Kleenex is in the studio. Yeah,
I've I've invested heavily in waterproof makeup, all of it,
not just I makeup with my tears. They just it's
like sloppy, they get all over my cheek. Waterproof lipstick.
It's horrible. No, I'm surprised that we haven't touched on
it because when it comes to women, women in the workplace,

(00:47):
inevitably a conversation about emotions pops up. What really, Yeah,
need I call out some books, some helpful books from
Amazon to illustrate my points. Well, you can choose from
titles such as A Creamers it's always personal navigating emotion

(01:07):
in the new workplace and this is Yeah, she's very helpful. Yeah,
she is kind of the go to gal when it
comes to waterworks in the workplace, and we're going to
cite her a number of times throughout this podcast. Then
there's Roxanne Rivera, who outlines her whole stance on crying
in the workplace with her title there's no crying in Business.

(01:28):
How women can succeed in male dominated industries. I see
what she did there with the baseball Also, if you
have to cry, Go Outside by Kelly Katrone. That's a
very straightforward title. Yes, she didn't need to write a book,
she just need to make a poster. Nevertheless, I'm sure
she sold a number of copies. And then there's more

(01:50):
touchy feely stuff like emotions in the workplace, understanding the
structure and role of emotions in the work Wait, now
an organizational behavior by Robert g. So there's a lot
of stuff looking into emotions in the workplace, especially as
in the past thirty years women have really been making
inroads and climbing the ranks. And we you know, it's

(02:15):
still the thing of is it okay if you're a woman,
do let yourself go? A lot of people say no, adamantly, no,
do not cry, do not show weakness. It will kill
your career, you won't get a promotion, everyone will hate you.
But we do have to kick things off. A couple
of quotes from some incredibly successful women who offer a

(02:37):
little more nuanced inside on crying in the office. First
from Tina Phey's book Boss a Pants, which I highly recommend,
she says some people say, never let them see you cry.
I say, if you're so mad, you could just cry,
then cry. It terrifies everyone. So crying is a power play.
It is yes, yes, manute out of one person who

(03:01):
is very open about her crying, and not only open
about it, but has been quoted about and written about
several times because of her crying is Facebook CEO Cheryl Sandberg,
who talks about how she doesn't believe that we have
a professional self from Monday's through Fridays and real self
for the rest of the time. She says that kind
of division probably never worked, but in today's world, with

(03:23):
a real voice and authentic voice, it makes even less sense.
I've cried at work. I've told people have cried at work,
and it's been reported in the President Cheryl Sandberg cried
on Mark Zuckerberg's shoulder, which is not exactly what happened.
So yeah, she goes on to talk about her emotions,
and yeah, she she tries to be herself yeah, basically
saying you can be honest about your strengths and your

(03:43):
weaknesses and understand the fact that it can be challenging
to always delineate smoothly between the professional and the personal,
because the fact of the matter is, at some point,
whether you are a nude or a lady or whatever
or else you'd like to identify as sometimes when stings
get mixed up. But before we get into more of

(04:06):
the etiquette of workplace emotions and the dues and don'ts
of crying in the office, let's talk about some science,
because here's the thing about women and crying in the office.
We often hear that women are more prone to cry
because of socialization, which we will touch on, But from

(04:28):
the get go, we have science against us if the
goal is to never never show tears, because our tear
ducks are built differently, the hormones that are found in
tears are different in men and women, and science is
still unraveling this mystery of tears. Yeah, well, it's not

(04:50):
only that our tear ducks are shaped differently. I mean,
men have larger tear ducks than women do, so when
the tears well up, more of them are hanging around
in the men's eye balls than in the women's they
might spill over. It's down to the cells. The cells
of female tear glands even looked different from the cells
in men's tear glands. So, I mean, we're just we're

(05:11):
wired for so many different reasons. And you mentioned hormones.
Testosterone helps raise the threshold between emotional stimulus and actually crying,
so that feeling of like I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm
not okay, I'm not really okay, I'm not okay, I'm crying.
That's longer for men than it is for women. Right.
And another hormone that these scientists have been looking into

(05:34):
in terms of its role with crying is something called prolactin,
which we have mentioned before on the podcast in a
reference to breastfeeding, because it's something found in breast milk,
and neuroscientists in biochemists at Regent's Hospital and St. Paul, Minnesota,
William H. Fry, the second Old Fry Jr. Has looked

(05:56):
into emotional tears and these are to be distinct from
irritant tears, like when we're crying, when we're crying an onion,
when we're cutting up an onion. If dust gets in
our eyes, the stuff that comes out of our eyeballs,
and that happens. These emotional tears that we cry when
we're real sad or just super stressed out contain proteins
salt and prolactin, and Fry thinks that because women have

(06:23):
fifty six more prolactin than men do, that maybe that
also has something to do with women being more prone
to emotional tears. Yeah, a lot of the research that
Fry did was back in the eighties, and this was
when uh, you know, women are fighting against the glass ceiling.
You know, don't ever let anybody see you cry, you know,
don't be seen as weak in front of all these

(06:45):
men that you're working with now. And a lot of
the examples that he gave in an article that appeared
in Bloomberg Business Week of women that he had worked
with or talked to were women who felt like they
started crying suddenly and uncontrollably, like it just came up
upon them and they couldn't even stop. And so Fry
theorized that a good cry helps us release stress. However,

(07:06):
that was back in the eighties. This is still not
proven and it is very hard to study tears because
you know, people feel ashamed of crying. They may not
report exactly why they're crying or that they cried at all,
and then you've got the whole lab scenario of like, okay,
Kristen cry. Yeah, it's hard to just get people who
are not trained actors to summon up emotional tears exactly.

(07:29):
We're always trying to fight it off, whereas actors are like,
please let me cry. I want to win an oscar um.
But yeah, if if it is true that crying does
help release stress or those stress related hormones that build up,
then maybe it could actually be healthy at work. I
mean it might not be socially accepted or looked at
as something desirable, but hey, if you're gonna be all

(07:51):
stressed at work, maybe you do need to go sit
in your car for a minute and and have a
good cry. Perhaps. But speaking of though, that's so realization
factor we're talking about, you know, fighting the tears. As
we mentioned, you know, men, especially in westernized countries, are
more socialized to not cry. That crying is for girls,

(08:13):
crying is for sissies. Uh. This was something that Luann Brizandine,
who's a neuropsychiatrist and also author of the Female Brain,
argues that it's the social conditioning factor that has really
primed women's impulse to cry and men's I guess, a
fight against tears. And this was interesting. In a Wall

(08:35):
Street Journal article, they talked to this guy named Tom Lutz,
who was a University of California Riverside professor who thinks
that men not crying in the workplace actually traces to
the late nineteenth century when factory workers were discouraged from
indulging in emotion so that it wouldn't interfere with productivity.

(08:58):
So maybe men not crying at work and now women
being told to never cry at work especially is a
product of the industrial revolution. That's interesting. I would like
to know more about that. Yeah, because there have been
global surveys on crying in gender and it's found that
Western women cry much more often than men, whereas the

(09:21):
gender gaps aren't as large where the countries aren't as industrialized.
So there might be a component to that. But the
fact of the matter is whether or not, you know,
we think that it's okay or not okay for women
to cry at work. Ladies, we do it, Yeah, And Creamer,

(09:42):
who we talked about at the top of the podcast,
worked with ad agency J Walter Thompson to survey twelve
Americans and found that women under forty five are ten
times as likely to cry at work as men forty
five and older. She also found that about of the
working population overall is made up of people who respond
to extreme stress by crying. Among women, it's I'm a

(10:07):
stress crier. I mean, I'm not a big crier overall
in life. I don't cry a whole lot, but when
I hit a point where it's just like too much,
I have been known to shut a tear two. Yeah,
I know things are bad if I'm welling up in
my chemical And it's not just at work that this
gender gap of tears is happening. Even though some researchers

(10:28):
think that men under report the number of times that
they cry. But again, going back to Dr Fry's research,
He's found that women cry just in general about four
times more often than men, with women on a monthly
basis crying five point three times per month, which translates
to every day of her minstrual cycle. Just kidding, does

(10:48):
that apply to you at all? Five point three times
per month if I recently went through a breakup, maybe
that does seem like a lot. But I don't have
the in phone in front of me on how large
this population is, because I'd be curious to see what
the like the sample ages would be, because that's five
point three times per month, and then men crying one

(11:11):
point four times per month, which also seems to me
kind of high. But again, maybe you and I just aren't.
Maybe we're just robosts. Were robots robots? Oh no, Caroline
and Kristen robots podcast robots. And then when it comes
so to work and Creamer in that same service that

(11:33):
you mentioned, Caroline found that forty one percent of women
had cried at work in the past year, compared to
only nine of men. But what set off women's water
works differed from what set the dudes off. Women were
more addled by the content of a negative message. Basically,

(11:53):
if someone was like, you are a terrible podcaster and
I think that you're face is stupid, would be like,
what I'm not? You know, you know, the general you
this fiction, whereas men would be more upset over the
tone and communication style. So if they were like, get

(12:15):
me upset, which is you know, it wouldn't be. Maybe
that would be if they just don't like to be
yelled at. Maybe, or if the yeah, if the town
is frustrating or disrespectful or something. Maybe. But one really
fascinating part of this research that we're doing on women
and crying is that sure, you know, we assume that

(12:35):
you know, you might be putting yourself at risk of
diminished credibility in the workplace if you're caught crying. It
might make you look bad. It might even reflect poorly
on other women in the office. But the thing is,
women might judge other women more harshly for crying. This

(12:58):
might not think be a thing of male superiors or
male coworkers getting all weirded up because women are crying
all the time, but more women being upset at other
women crying because we have been told to never cry
in the office, that it is such a terrible thing. Yeah,
well that all and creamer. She found that of women

(13:20):
she surveyed considered workplace criers unstable, which suggested serious character flaw,
as opposed to of men who said criers are merely unprofessional,
suggesting a forgivable one time lap. So, so, yeah, what
is it with us being harsher critics, and and is
it just us staring down the barrel of some old

(13:40):
stereotypes that we have to battle. I think it is
the old stereotypes. I think it's also more of a
direct understanding of maybe the fact that we are still
having to elbow our way in in certain ways. Yeah,
Creamer says that the women she finds that the women
who caution against tears the most are largely quote older

(14:01):
and part of the battle scarred early generations of women
who had to emulate the narrow band male emotional spectrum
to gain entry to the professional arena. And there were
the series of articles on Forbes around spring written by
Jenna gudrou about crying in the office, about like who
does it? Is it okay? What are the percentages? Et cetera.
And she was writing about it very objectively, but one

(14:24):
of her colleagues commented on one of the articles. Susannah Breslyn,
a fellow Forbes contributor, was not She didn't mince words.
I'll just say that when she commented, Yeah, a lot
of times we don't quote comments sections from articles that
were citing in the podcast. But this exchange between Breslin Gudreaux,

(14:45):
and there was another contributor, Forbes contributor Bonnie Marcus, who
ended up weighing in as well that I feel like
sums up this whole women crying in the office issue
pretty well. It covers all sides of it. So Breslyn right,
I'm with those people who loathe women crying at work.
It looks bad, it makes everyone else feel bad, and
it's embarrassing. It makes me feel embarrassed to be a woman.

(15:09):
It's not really about crying or about what's going on
that prompted the tears. It's about self control, and that's
a chronic problem I see with women in the workplace,
a lack of self discipline. You can cry all you want,
but do it in the bathroom. My eyes almost bugged
out of my head when I read that Breslin is
a tough cookie. Why you got to be a hater Breslin?
Geez well. I don't think that Breslin is alone though.

(15:32):
I mean the very fact that Kramer's survey found that
went women consider workplace chriers unstable, I think it says
a lot, and I think that Breslin would probably obviously
be in that group. Author Jenna Gudreau responded, that's a
pretty hard line. Do you think you don't like seeing

(15:53):
women cry because it feels uh? Forbes writer Jenna grou
Drow then chimed in, that's a pretty hard line. Do
you think you don't like seeing women cry because it
feeds into old stereotypes about women being too emotional? Do
you feel the same way about men who cry? No
response from Breslin. And then Bonnie Marcus, another forms contributors, says,

(16:18):
I think that when women cry at work it does
make their colleagues uncomfortable. People don't know how to react.
That being said, I don't think we can make a
blanket statement about crying at work. If she cries all
the time, it's problematic. Her female colleagues are more likely
to call her out and chastise her for her display
of emotions, and it interfere fears with a normal work environment.
On the other hand, if a woman cries at a

(16:39):
reaction to a particular issue and it's not usual behavior,
it's more likely to be accepted by others. And Bonnie
Marcus brings up a great point about the frequency of crying,
because if it just so happens that you break down
every time you get a negative review from a manager,
maybe there's a little bit of manipulation, go I'm there, um,

(17:03):
But if it's just you know, everybody has a bad
day or a bad week. Roxanne Rivera doesn't care. No,
she doesn't rock. Roxanne Rivera who wrote, as Kristen said,
there's no crying in business. She said, crying at the
office is the ultimate no. No, nothing will destroy your
credibility faster people. But the subtitle of her book that

(17:25):
was talking about how to succeed in a male dominated industry,
So maybe that's the attack that she's taking. And Roxanne
Rivera would probably also be among the group that an
Creamer talked about who when she was starting her career
in the late seventies, she said that she and all
the other career ladies that she knew were explicitly told

(17:46):
to never cry in the office, but that more modern
workplaces and gen y our generation Caroline that were changing things.
They were becoming more emotionally open in the office, and
that is okay. There was even a Wall Street Journal
article published in two thousand seven, I believe that was

(18:07):
talking about how jen wires are more likely to demonstrate
emotions in the workplace and that employers just need to
understand that that's how we work. Get with it, old people,
although it also it also made gen Wires seem just
like spoiled brats who were like, I don't want to
do my report. Yeah. Psychology professor and author Gene Twins

(18:30):
said that our generation gen Y was raised with the
phrase express yourself. I'm sure she wasn't thinking of Madonna,
which I immediately thought of. But anyway, this this generation
is accustomed to lavish praise from their parents. So maybe
when they get a bad review or what would otherwise
be construed as constructive criticism, maybe they're just so taken aback.

(18:52):
But I mean, I don't know. I obviously you can't
make a blanket statement like that because I I'm part
of that generation and I seek feedback all the time.
But whatever and whatever, and if jen Wires do need
an exercise and maybe toughening themselves up from the give
every kid a trophy kind of attitudes that some of

(19:12):
us were raised with, you should start a podcast, put
it on iTunes, and then read the reviews because inevitably
someone's gonna call you a man hating feminazi. Yeah, well
you know that's how we roll. That's actually my vanity
played on my car. It's it's really long. It's all
the vowels are taken out in some numbers, so it

(19:34):
makes no sense at what It's like the theories of
F and z's and there goes Caroline. Um. I did
like though, I mean thinking about the whole thing about
emotions at work and whether to cry or not to cry.
I did like this perspective offered by psychiatrists Judith Orloff.
She said, emotional freedom is having a choice of how

(19:56):
to respond rather than reacting in the moment without control.
Train yourself so you're not taking off guard. And that
makes a lot of sense to me. I feel like
that's that's some some usable knowledge, because yeah, there are
gonna be times when you you can't once the waterworks start,
you can't stop, and women have those tiny tear ducks
and it's just prolactin. Um. So let's get into some

(20:20):
some more nitti er of the of the how twos,
What what women advise that you do in the workplace
when you confront emotion, and what to do if you're crying,
and how you recover from that. Yeah, definitely give yourself
time and distance to collect yourself after the event, or

(20:42):
you know whether you're crying or whether it's any outburst, really,
so let the issue rest and maybe you know, for
smaller issues, just just a lunch hour could work, or
a bathroom break, but don't let the break be an
excuse to dodge the issue. If it was bad enough
to make you cry or yell or hit something or someone,
then you obviously need to do with the issue. They
also recommend this I think would be more for an

(21:03):
outburst than crying, But still you want to make amends
quickly and decisively, so circle back when you're calm and apologize.
This is not the same as apologizing for the reason
for the behavior, however, But because we know that crying
can freak people out, maybe if you responded in a
way that scared your co workers, maybe circle back and
just be like, hey, that was crazy yesterday. Let's talk

(21:25):
about it. Yeah, Because there is sort of a hierarchy
of crying in the workplace, where at the very bottom
of it is some sniffles at your desk or in
the bathroom that no one really notices, and then you
get into one on one meetings and then you get
into public meetings, and then you get into public meetings

(21:46):
when you have like investors on the line or something,
you know what I mean, Like when when there's actual
when the tears are more tears of anger followed by outbursts,
and that's when you really have to go back and
make your personal amends. Yeah. And they do talk about
repairing those relationships and strengthening relationships with the people who

(22:08):
set you off or intimidate you, And this sounds like
I thought about it. I was reading that and I
stopped and I thought about the jobs I have had
and the people who have upset me and or intimidated
me or just made me mad, And I was like, God,
I wouldn't want to be closer with those people. But
they say that getting to know someone, maybe not like
going to drinks with them or anything, but just getting

(22:29):
to know someone and understanding their motivations for the way
they act or speak could be helpful for you. Personally,
you're not going to change anybody, but maybe if you
get a better perspective on why they speak the way
they do or act the way they do, maybe you
can finally take it less personally. Yeah, And that's a
great way to think about managing emotions in the workplace.

(22:51):
Some of the advice that we saw on how to
stop yourself from crying if you are just kind of
prone to crying. I mean, I know, I know, some
people are just more prone to tears than others. You
and I, Caroline, robots to robots, um. But if you
do feel like you have a crying session coming on,

(23:12):
the first thing that's usually recommended is to get out.
Just get out of the room, go to a bathroom.
Better yet, get out of the building. Practice routine stress
relievers like doing yoga, breathing, taking brisk walks, boxing, hitting things,
kicking things. Knowing your triggers as well, kind of under

(23:32):
like what you talked about, Caroline, understand taking time. If
you don't get along very well with certain people, taking
a minute instead of just casting all of your angst
onto them and say that they're just terrible people, thinking
a minute to understand what it is about their communication
style or their management style, whatever it might be that

(23:52):
is really pushing your buttons. And then also be aware
of emotional suppression and contagions. Basically, like negative emotions spread
like viruses throughout the office and can bring you down
and make you more susceptible to having an episode. Yeah,
that emotional suppression. This is coming from a Wall Street

(24:13):
Journal article in they say that it clouds thinking, promotes
job on happiness, and negatively impacts work performance. So I mean,
if you're just walking around angry or sitting around at
your desk angry, and you never get to the root
of it or fix it or talk to anybody about it,
you're obviously gonna it's gonna color your perception of work.
And um, I like what Ann Cramer says about tears. Once,

(24:37):
once you've gotten over the emotional suppression and they're flowing
and you can't help it. She says that tears are
like the check engine light on your dashboards, so it
can help you to be more productive. And I had
a total check engine light moment when I worked at
the newspaper years ago. I'm not going to name names,
but I'm gonna say it was a newspaper. Anyway, I
was living in a town and it wasn't the best.

(25:02):
I had come to a point where I was like,
you know, I really think I should start looking for
another job, Like I'm really not satisfied. You know, things
aren't going so well, but I had a weekend to
look forward to. I was like, it's okay, I'm going
I can have my weekend and I can have my
personal time. And then my supervisor called me and she
needed me to come in on my weekend and work
no So I came in. You know, I worked from

(25:23):
ford to midnight, so I come in at four o'clock
and I I mean, let me repeat, I'm not a crier,
you know, like unless something is really awful or really
sad or whatever, I'm not much of a crier. I
sat at that computer for the first I think four
hours of work that I was there and just cry,
couldn't stop, like like that kind of ugly crying. Not

(25:45):
only were tears spilling down my face, but I was
like making noises and my supervisor comes ever. At one
point she's like put her arm around me. She's like,
are you okay? Is everything all right? And I'm like yeah,
I just trying to know what to talk about. It.
That was my check engine light moment. My my engine
actually exploded when I ended up having a massive stress
migraine that sent me to the hospital emergency room. Uh

(26:08):
that's when I quit um. But yeah, it is very
important to listen to your body and if you are
crying all the time, or crying for any reason, do
try to understand what the core issue is. It might
not just be that you're messing or you're sad or
you woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
There might be something deep seated, like like a deep

(26:28):
seated satisfaction with your entire life, you know, just for example,
Uh that makes you break into tears. Yeah, I think
it's It's such a good point of how it's important
to pay attention even if you're not crying, if you
are just deeply unsatisfied and you're always venting at work
and there's nothing but negativity. It might sound hokey, but

(26:52):
it is true. I've had similar experiences before where you
have to stop yourself and say, wait, wait, wait, wait
a minute, what is going on? Because you take it
into your personal life. And that's when what Cheryl Sandberg
was talking about in terms of delineating between the professional
and personal and how those lives always end up merging.

(27:14):
It's the same as bringing your personal into the office
and taking the office home with you. It can be
just as as negative and have equally bad impacts. So
I mean, you might be good at your job, or
you know, competent at your job, but if you're crying
or you find yourself venting or getting upset all of

(27:35):
the time, look at yourself and look at what you're
doing for a living, and maybe those two things just
don't line up. Maybe you're a very creative person who
needs to be you know, doing something on your own time,
on your own schedule. Maybe you are somebody who needs
a more regimented data entry type of thing because that's
how your brain works. But when those things get out
of alignment, then your emotions can tend to swell up.

(27:58):
You don't mean them too, and it can even be
uh not, you know. And the solution can even be
something as simple as just needing more support. You know.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to make life
altering decisions. It's just like you said, it's a good
check engine, you know. And Creamer, take your metaphorical car

(28:19):
to the psychological mechanics and figure out what's wrong with
your transmission. Right that means your your brain and your
heart and stuff. Car analogy over, She got a car
stop post to come in and do with an episode
just in car analogies. So the question in the podcast

(28:51):
title Caroline, is is it okay to cry in the office?
What do you say? I say not because not because
you're a woman. Now I don't mean you, I mean
the general you. It's not that it's not okay to
cry in the office because you're a woman. I think
whoever you are, whatever your sex, maybe just go to

(29:14):
the bathroom. Yeah. Um, if it gets to a point,
really seriously, take the advice of if you feel it
boiling over, excuse yourself because it, trust me, it freaks
people out when you cry. Yeah, I think that it's uh,
it's not an issue of if you cry in the office,
you are just disappointing every single woman who's ever had

(29:35):
a job in her wife. But the whole thing of
if you're crying, and it's not because of you know,
all of a sudden someone calls and your grandma died,
you know those kinds of tears, Yeah, cry in the
office if uh, you know, those kinds of personal tragedies occur.
But if if you are crying, it's probably a sign
that you have not been doing your homework and kind
of taking care of things to to keep yourself emotionally

(30:00):
healthy and hopefully happy. We can't be happy all the time,
but you know, making life manageable. I make to do lists.
I got a little I got a little choked out
the other day at work because I found out how
much I own taxes um and just like that by itself,
probably I could have been like, Okay, I have a solution,

(30:20):
It's fine. But it was stressful day. Everything was so
I was kind of underwater and that was just one
more thing. And I was like, I didn't cry though
nothing spilled over. I had big tear ducks that day.
But what did you do? This sounds like you may
you were able to manage it. Well, Yeah, because I
I sat in a dark room for like five minutes
there you go, and and just did some deep breaths
and went back to my desk. So now you can

(30:42):
write a book called if you have to cry, go
in a dark room. Yeah done, find a closet trunk perhaps,
and some box wine by Chris and Conger and Caroline Urban. Absolutely,
so I am very much looking forward to hearing people's
responses to this, women and men alike. Also because that

(31:05):
the speaking of men crying in the office all of
the stuff focuses on women crying in the office because
men don't cry. Nine percent of men have cried in
the office in the past year, according to that survey. So, guys,
what what do you do? Is it just a moot point?
Is it? Is it? Is it a sex difference in
managing emotions? Women? Do you think it's bad for other

(31:26):
women to cry in the office? Any thoughts that you
have about tears in the workplace? Let us know your thoughts. Mom.
Stuff at Discovery dot com is where you can send
your email. Now for a couple of letters, Now, Carolina
kick things off. I've got an email here from Lindsay
and she's asking for some advice about love, and so

(31:51):
I thought that it would be great too to maybe
answer her question on the podcast. She writes, how do
people know if they are really in love and meant
to be with another person or if it's just the
endorphins making them feel addicted and comfortable and safe. To
give you a little background on myself, I've been dating
a guy for a year now and I've definitely started

(32:12):
noticing his flaws, but in my opinion, they still don't
outweigh the positives. How do you know when you're in love.
I responded to lindsay that uh to me, because I
thought about this whole endorphint thing too. It can if
you learn enough about like the neurochemistry of attraction, it

(32:33):
can make you a love skeptic. It might have been
a damper on my dating life from time to time,
but I told her that you really find out when
you're in love with someone when those initial endorphins do
wear off in more of the quieter moments after you're
not necessarily in the quote unquote honeymoon phase. But what

(32:55):
happens when it's not amazing? If that makes sense. Not
to say that you need tragedy or something horrible to
happen to test your love, but I'm just saying, if, um,
when you're not on that little pink cloud anymore, when
things have come down to earth a little, and you
guys feel like your actual partners, like you're taking care

(33:17):
of each other, like you value each other enough that
you're not just gonna be like, oh, well, I'm not
feeling butterflies anymore. I'm out of here exactly, not needing
to float on that pink little cloud to feel comfortable
and safe. I mean, sure, you could go into the
argument for days about the chemicals and how they make

(33:38):
you feel and why they make you feel that way, Like,
let's keep procreating and keep this whole human race deal going. Yeah,
but let that be your person if if those are
the chemicals, you know, if you guys had chemicals, and
then now maybe you have fewer chemicals. You just have
different chemicals. I don't know what I'm saying anymore. However, partnership.

(33:59):
Is that enough words that I just said? No, I
think that makes sense. I think I told her that. Uh,
you know, it seems like things are going well if
she's seen the flaws, as she says, in her boyfriend
of a year, but she doesn't matter all that much. Now.
If those flaws are him being a crappy boyfriend, then
that should matter. But in terms of you know, I

(34:20):
think that's also a good thing. That you know, if
you always keep someone up on some crazy pedestal, then
you're both gonna end up pretty disappointed. I think. Yeah, yeah,
So how do you know if you're in love? There
are many different answers. Love is not a Disney movie.
I'll say that much. Okay, Well, I have a letter

(34:40):
here from a listener who would like to remain anonymous Kristen.
She's writing in response to our Designer Vagina podcast and says,
I'm twenty two years old and had a pubic lift
done when I was eighteen. Not a procedure I heard
you mentioned on the podcast. It's basically the removal of
fat from in front of the pubic bone to make

(35:01):
the volva flatter. It cost me around five thousand Canadian dollars,
which my parents lent to me. It was an outpatient
surgery carried out at a private clinic by a cosmetic
surgeon and only took a few hours. You are right
on the money when you say it's self confidence issues
that prompt women to pursue general genital surgery. But I
don't regret it at all. I am happy with my

(35:21):
lady parts now. Everything healed well, and the surgeon and
nurse made sure I was well informed of the risks beforehand.
I don't miss having a volva that would show through
clothing or cause anxiety with men. I'm sexually active now
and have never had any comments on my volva other
than to tell me that it's beautiful. Though the procedure
itself was scary to think about. It's done nothing but

(35:41):
good for my self confidence and self acceptance. Although surgeries
of this nature may be a symptom of society's views
on women, I don't think that women should be criticized
for wanting them. Addressing deeper psychological issues is perhaps important,
but society needs to change before the demand for a
designer vaginas will go away. I would identify as a
feminist and recognize that my desire for a smaller volva

(36:03):
comes from my role in a patriarchal culture. But it's
not easy to step outside of that and accept yourself.
So thank you very much, dear listener. We appreciate your story,
and we appreciate all the stories that you all send
into us. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is where
you can send your letters. You can also find us
on Facebook, which of you have not been to it,

(36:24):
I highly encourage you to go on there so that
you can check out our weekly photos that we are posting.
Caroline and I Oh, Caroline and myself owe us in
celebration of Women's History Month. That's all I'll say. There
are costumes involved. We gotta kick out of it. We

(36:45):
hope you will too. And you can tell us so
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(37:07):
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