If love knows no boundaries, soul requires a passport on occasion.

American males have evolved to the point where the occasional teardrop no longer stains a reputation.

Professional athletes break down regularly when announcing their retirements, going misty over teammates they’ll miss and cheers they’ll no longer hear.

The former president, George W. Bush, cried during a Medal of Honor ceremony in 2007. Only the hard-hearted thought less of his public display of emotion.

A man of the new millennium seems more at home in baring himself to the softer measures of sentiment. NASCAR drivers hug their crew chiefs, commentators make weepy proclamations of patriotism, reality-show bachelors appear dramatically conflicted when cutting loose a could-have-been fiancée.

Our culture allows these episodes without judgment, a moderation of social expectation for those with XY chromosomes.

They make cinemas dark for a reason, and if guys lose it a bit after Tom Hanks dies in “Saving Private Ryan,” all gets set right sitting a few moments longer as the final credits roll.

With this as context though, the nation goes a little queasy when a sitting governor puts on a full fountain exhibition when discussing his South American mistress and the magic of the Uruguayan moonlight.

In collective reaction, the United States gagged.

South Carolina’s Gov. Mark Sanford became a buzz generator for the 2012 presidential race. Just two months ago, fidelity-famous Newt Gingrich said of Mr. Sanford, “He certainly would be on anybody’s list of potential candidates, depending on what he wants to do.”

What he wanted to do at the time of that statement was reject for South Carolina the stimulus money coming from Washington. What he wanted to do subsequently was sneak off to Argentina for a few days with a woman not his wife.

Calling his dalliance “a forbidden one, a tragic one,” he admitted to an interviewer, “I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate.”

And he sobbed.

Perhaps he realized at that moment not the error of his ways but the sap in his words.

Humans shed tears as an emotional release, discharging in the moisture a chemical element that influences temperament. In less physiological terms, crying serves as a form of communication, a language that binds people in distress.

Movie stars sell a skill set of crying on cue, a matter of pride in that industry. Meg Ryan bought several homes by maximizing this gift.

Old timers would use sliced onions to prompt tears for the camera. Afterward, they would drop them in a French soup. Those were leaner times.

In the entertainment of politics, of the sort Gov. Sanford and others provide, the blubbering seems too awkward and ill-staged to be artificial.

Personal torment never plays as cleanly as staged remorse. It is one of the rare cases where the faked stuff looks more realistic. Maybe that’s because the actual upset arises not from personal misdeeds but from getting caught.

Mark Sanford took his mischief to a different hemisphere, an outsourcing of some ambition but no real difference. Tears translate to almost every culture.

Domestic-born soul mates are so hard to find. It’s enough to make a man cry.

Ken Newton’s column

runs on Sunday and Tuesday.