Robin Weis, the same girl who brought us 8 years of dating data, tracked her crying patterns for 589 days, rating them on a scale from ‘a tear or two’ to ‘I am a crumpled pile of flesh’. She cried on 216 of those days. And I thought I cried a lot.
Number of Cries Per Day
She categorized each cry into 8 general categories, shown in the graph below. The mound of purple life-related cries on the left side was largely during a 10 week trip to Europe. A large proportion of her cries were breakup and relationship related, which included finding out her boyfriend was married. Yep, that’s bound to cause some tears. Check out her full post here.
Categories of Cries Over Time
What I’ve found interesting
- Relationships and breakups appear to cause a lot of negative emotions. It’d be interesting to see what a graph of positive emotions due to relationships would look like, though that would be harder to quantify. Crying generally has an obvious beginning and end, but how would you track your start of happy feelings and end of happy feelings as precisely?
- Is travel-crying a thing? Robin mentions that almost 20% of her crying occurred while she was traveling solo. I had a similar experience recently when I was in South America. It can be particularly uncomfortable if you’re staying in a hostel and there’s nowhere private where you can just go and cry. Has anyone else experienced this?
As I’m taking my first steps into the world of online dating (I just signed up to OKCupid for the first time) it can be a little scary seeing the amount of angst relationships can cause. Might I be more comfortable staying safely single?
I hate to be yet another blog that touts the benefits of travel, but my experience with travel is relevant here. Even though I spent a lot of time being unhappy while traveling, overall it was a rewarding experience that enhanced my life and I’d do it again. As for dating, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Date By Number 
You post the most interesting relationship related statistics I’ve ever read.
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That’s so nice of you to say! I find a lot of it first on flowingdata.com.
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So insightful and beautifully written.
I have a similar thing, where I track my mood. The aim is to see a pattern and categorise my mood. But I don’t have a statistically valid sample yet! :p
I can relate to your post
And lastly, one of my favourite songs is called Tears (by Rush).
All the best with OkCupid ❤
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That would be interesting to see someday. Is it an app or just something you’re doing on your own?
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Just on my own 🙂
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This is interesting. I probably cried 4 times in the past year and I thought that was a lot.
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Good grief, that’s a lot of tears! O.o I’ve never tracked my emotions like this, but it seems a bit excessive. On the other hand, I’m not a big crier. I’ve cried around 5 times in the past two years, and at least two of those times were due to sappy books/movies. Dealing with people and relationships can be very cry-inducing. Another plus to staying single, haha.
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Ha! Well put!
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I guess the sheer amount of her crying is what makes this more interesting. It’d make for a pretty boring analysis if she’d only cried 5 times!
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This is fascinating! I am sure that I cry more than that though haha. I’m kind of tempted to track my tears now. I would definitely say that people, those close to me mostly, cause a lot of tears, so I’m not surprised to see the results from her dating experience.
Dating and traveling are worthwhile experiences. Do what makes you happy. And if you find a way to quantify that, let me know, I’d be curious to see how that plays out 😉
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It sounds like there’s a huge difference in crying ranges out there. It’d be interesting to see what other people’s data looks like. I will definitely keep you posted!
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Fascinating post! I’ve never tried to track my crying, but most of it this past year has been work-related…
Best of luck on OK Cupid! I met my fiance there, and a few of my now-married friends met their husbands there! My advice is: don’t waste your time with second dates unless the first was really fun–people might argue that nerves and awkwardness get in the way of a first date and second chances are worthwhile, but I don’t think there’s any reason to go on any date you’re not looking forward to!
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Funny you should say that! I just had the opposite advice from someone else, i.e. go for a second date unless you really disliked the first. But I definitely agree, why bother going if you’re not looking forward to it?
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