# Does everyone cry? > No. Most sessions involve no crying at all, tears are not a measure of depth, and not crying does not mean it failed. What working looks like instead. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/does-everyone-cry/ - Section: Questions - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. People arrive at this question from two directions. Some are terrified of crying in front of a stranger. Others have done this for a year and are quietly worried that they never have. Both groups are fine. --- ## In short - Most sessions involve no crying. It is one possible response among several, not the target. - Crying is not a measure of depth. Some of the strongest experiences people describe are entirely dry. - Trying to produce tears tends to prevent them, because self-monitoring blocks the state that causes them. - A partner who treats tears as the goal is running the scene for the wrong reason. No. Most sessions involve no crying whatsoever, and a good number of people have done this happily for years without ever having cried once. Crying is one thing a person might do, alongside laughing, going quiet, going talkative, shaking, or feeling nothing much at all. It is common enough that [what if I cry](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/what-if-i-cry/) is a reasonable worry. It is nowhere near universal. ## Where the expectation comes from Fiction, mainly. Tears are a convenient way for a writer to show that something significant happened, so in stories they arrive on cue. Nobody writes the scene where a person gets up, says that was good, and puts the kettle on. Forums make it worse in a different way. People post about the sessions that produced something dramatic, because those are the ones that feel worth writing up. An ordinary satisfying Tuesday evening generates no post at all, which leaves a wildly skewed impression of what is typical. And there is a strand of thinking, mostly borrowed from therapy language, that treats emotional release as the point of everything. Sometimes it is. Often what people want is calm, or structure, or the specific pleasure of the sensation, none of which produces tears and none of which is a lesser version. ## What working actually looks like In my experience the reliable signs have nothing to do with crying. Breathing changes, and gets slower and deeper rather than tighter. The body goes heavy against whatever it is resting on. Speech gets shorter and slower, and the person stops constructing sentences and starts giving one-word answers. Afterwards there is a particular kind of stillness, and quite often somebody who cannot be bothered to move for twenty minutes. That is the state described on [headspace](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/headspace/), and it is entirely compatible with a completely dry face. Judging a session by tears is like judging a meal by whether anybody said anything. ## If you want to and cannot This is a real disappointment for some people, particularly those who came to this hoping for a release they cannot find any other way. A few things that seem to matter. - Self-consciousness is the main blocker, and it is strongest with somebody new. The third or fourth session with the same person is a completely different situation from the first. - Trying is counterproductive. Monitoring yourself for a reaction is the opposite of the state that produces one. This is the same reason nobody falls asleep while checking whether they are asleep. - Duration and pacing do more than force. Long, slow, repetitive sessions with real pauses get people there far more often than short heavy ones. See [pacing a scene](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/pacing-a-scene/). - Some people are simply not criers. If you did not cry at your own father's funeral, the odds of crying over a hairbrush on a Saturday are low, and that is not a defect. It also arrives late for a lot of people. Crying after the session, in the car, or the next morning while doing something unrelated, is common. The reaction is not obliged to occur within the hour it was caused. ## The version to be wary of A partner who treats tears as the objective. It shows up as pushing past the point where a scene should have ended, as a comment afterwards implying you did not get far enough, or as a general sense that the evening is being evaluated against a target you did not agree to. That is a top running the scene for their own benchmark rather than for the person in front of them. Say so out loud. Nobody owes anybody a reaction. See [reading your partner](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/reading-your-partner/). > **The reverse worry.** Some people cry at almost everything, including sessions that were mild and pleasant. That is equally unremarkable. It does not mean you were pushed too far and does not require an explanation, though it is worth mentioning beforehand so nobody panics the first time. ## The short version Do not use it as a measure. What a session should be judged on is how you feel two days later, when the chemistry has cleared and you can think properly. If the answer is settled, that worked, whatever your face did at the time. ## Read next - [Crying and release](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/crying-and-release/) - [What if I cry?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/questions/what-if-i-cry/) - [Headspace: subspace and topspace](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/why/headspace/) - [Aftercare](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/aftercare/) - [Pacing a scene](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/guide/pacing-a-scene/) ## Common questions ### Does everyone cry during a spanking? No. Most sessions involve no crying at all, and plenty of people have done this for years without ever crying. Tears are one possible response among several and they are not a measure of how deep or how genuine an experience was. ### Why can I not cry even when I want to? Usually self-consciousness, which is the ordinary state of anybody being watched. Some people are also simply not criers, in this or anywhere else. Chasing tears tends to prevent them, since monitoring yourself for a reaction is exactly the thing that stops it arriving.