Beware of men who cry. It’s true that men who cry are sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own.

The line plays as a deliberately sharp, comic provocation: it appears to praise male tears as evidence of sensitivity, then flips into suspicion that such sensitivity is self-directed. Ephron’s point is less a literal rule about men than a critique of performative vulnerability—emotion displayed in a way that recruits sympathy, centers the speaker, and can become a subtle form of manipulation. The warning implies that empathy is measured not by how intensely someone feels, but by whether they can extend feeling outward to others. Read in Ephron’s characteristic register, it also satirizes romantic narratives that treat a man’s emotional display as proof of depth or trustworthiness.