Moody Or Deep?

Do you ever have “moods”?

If so, you are not alone. Many people have bad moods, often in conjunction with sulking moods, pensive moods, nostalgic moods and generally ticked-off moods.

Even men have moods, although they don’t often realize it until later. It takes a more emotionally attuned person (i.e., a woman) to inform a man when he is in the midst of a mood.

“You’re in a bad mood,” a woman is likely to say.

“I am not in a bad mood,” a man is likely to reply, calmly. “You’re just bugging the heck out of me.”

Many men reach their 30s before they are willing to admit they even have such a wimpy thing as a mood. Even the kinds of young men often described as “brooding,” such as James Dean-like actors and Eddie Vedder-like rock stars, are likely to deny the charge that they are moody. They prefer to call themselves “thoughtful” or “deep” or maybe “complex.”

Moods are a sign of weakness, and young men like to pride themselves on being strong, silent and stoic. Teenage boys in particular are often convinced they are always on the same even emotional keel, which comes as a great surprise to their parents, who have to witness this keel as it heels alarmingly to port (girl troubles) and then wildly back to starboard (girl exhilaration).

Teenage girls, on the other hand, not only have moods constantly, but they know it and are prone to announce it.

“I am in such a bad mood,” a girl is likely to say. “No, really, this is even worse than yesterday’s bad mood.

It’s more like last Tuesday’s bad mood.”

The catalyst for this bad mood can be just about any small setback, up to and including: Somebody said something mean to me at school; somebody said something which might be interpreted as mean to me at school; or, I had to go to school.

As we grow older, our mood situation changes. Women, I think, tend to grow less moody as they enter adulthood. A woman has too many responsibilities - motherhood, career, informing her husband when he’s in a bad mood - to have as many bad moods as she once did.

Men, on the other hand, begin to feel more moody as they enter middle age, although of course this means merely that they finally have become mature enough to realize they are actually having moods. Some kinds of men - artists, Italian opera stars, guys who golf a lot - have lots and lots of moods. You can tell when they are having a bad mood because they are either acting all brooding and deep, or they are throwing little hissy-fits (as well as putters).

Then, as both men and women sail into middle and late-middle age, the situation changes once again. Both start having the most exciting and entertaining varieties of moods, which we call “mood swings.” For women, this consists of weeping one minute and laughing the next, or possibly screaming one minute and snuggling the next. Women are extremely talented at pouring every bit of their emotional energy into one mood, only to turn on a dime and given an equally passionate performance in the opposite direction. It’s as if every woman on earth becomes Meryl Streep, with the ability to become a different person on command, although most women can’t switch accents quite so well.

The middle-aged man’s mood swings are just as impressive, but in a different way. The middle-aged man swings back and forth between despair and exhilaration, between the conviction that he’s washed up, and the conviction that he’s at the peak of his powers. Sometimes he thinks he’s a miserable fraud and failure (this would be a “bad mood,” for those men who still have trouble recognizing one) and sometimes he thinks he’s a wise and venerated Captain of Men (this would be a “good mood,” or clinical self-delusion, I don’t know which). In any case, these mood swings are usually called a “midlife crisis” and are sometimes cured by finding a trophy wife, but more often cured by simply lying low and growing out of it. Around this time, the emotional balance seems to shift between men and women.

“I’m in a bad mood,” a middle-aged man will finally have the maturity to say.

“No, you’re not,” his wife might reply. “However, you are bugging the heck out of me.”