Did any of you had to and managed to learn to cry when you are hurt by someone?

I could never afford to cry as defense or reaction to hurt, because I had to fight for myself from early childhood. If I would not have pulled myself out of everything nobody would have ever safed me.

But in my relationships with men my inability to cry when I have been hurt is probably the biggest obstacle, because then I can only use words for explaining when I have been hurt or feel unjustly attacked and this is almost always misunderstood as attack or nagging itself.

I can cry generally, but only when I am alone or rarely when I feel a really empathic reaction by a close friend. But then it is usually crying because of something sad, but probably never as an intuitive reaction on being hurt.

My intuitive reaction on being hurt is first to withdraw and then trying to rationally assess the situation and try to compensate or explain or let go, when my patience and capacity are overstreched I attack back, or I defend myself, or try to make the other understand, or I withdraw entirely if it happens too often.

I think I realized today that this is completely counterproductive in relationships with men, but I have no idea about how I can change that.

Not crying but "standing my man" is so deeply ingrained in me that until now I wasn't even aware that this might be one potential root cause for some difficulties I had in my relationships... Additionally I was always taught that crying generally is wrong, manipulative, weak. When I cried as a child it was for granted that everything became even worse. I don't want to go into the details. But I never learned that crying as a reaction to being hurt is actually respected nor was I ever really comforted. So I also never felt safe. I had to either find my way and survive or I would have drowned.

So how can I soften myself here? Do you have any ideas?