It was a very weird experience I just had a minute ago. For context, I'm a 22yo 5/10 man who's been single for 2.5 years.

I'm at a bar on my own. I don't really go to bars solo anymore but I'm killing time because I just departed dinner with friends and my roommate has his girlfriend over and wants the place to himself. I'm a bit tipsy but not roaringly drunk by any means.

As I sat solo, playing chess on my phone and listening to one of my favourite podcasts, I noticed this girl at the table adjacent to me. She's very, very pretty. But she's with five of her friends so I figured that even if I had the balls to do so, it would be inappropriate for me to approach or do anything.

A little while later I noticed a girl playing pool with some guys. Again, it would be inappropriate because I have to assume she's with one of the men at the table, but wow she's very pretty. Very animated body language, very bubbly personality from the look of it.

In both cases, I was not feeling any incel-esque emotions of anger or sadness or envy, or really any unrequited Ophelian desire. Just the typical feeling of attraction and wandering thought that a young man feels when faced with such a distant and improbable prospect.

I was pondering the fact that I was in such close proximity to two attractive women when all of a sudden I burst into tears. It only lasted about 30 seconds and I was able to tactically hide it and recover thanks to a napkin, but it was very, very weird.

Don't get me wrong, I'm the kind of guy who gets a really warm feeling in his chest when he thinks about someone he's attracted to. Physiological reaction to attraction is not foreign to me. But why did I cry? Why did I have such a dramatic reaction to emotions that should make me feel a bit nice and nothing more?