6 Reasons You Can’t Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve When Dating These Days
There are some legitimate emotional terrorists out there who get an odd satisfaction out of hurting people – specifically those who are clearly open about their feelings.
1. There’s no guaranteed way to know if you’re dealing with someone who’s wearing their heart on their sleeve, or has an ace up it. When you make it evident what you want, pretenders can (and will) create a dishonest persona that they know you’d desire until they’ve gotten what they want out of the relationship, then they’ll either show you their true colors or refuse to break character all the way to the nearest exit, leaving you alone to figure out what you did wrong.
2. We’re in the hookup heavy era, so there’s a shift in what people value most — and it isn’t just physical. The saying “Why buy the cow when the milk is free?” suggests that if you give a person commitment-less sex, they’ll be satisfied with that and won’t feel obligated to commit to you. These days more and more often it seems that the milk in this metaphor is a person’s heart — their emotions, their affection, their time, their effort – these are the things people want and will happily take because it’s better than feeling alone. They’ll take all of that without buying the cow that is a clear, committed relationship. If they know they can get your loyalty without undoubtedly, openly giving theirs, they’ll do it.
3. Being open and honest about your feelings is the quickest way to be labeled one of the three Cs: clingy, creepy and/or crazy. If you don’t filter yourself when discussing your level of interest in someone, you could get a response reciprocating those sentiments, OR you can get a reputation as someone who belongs in the loony bin for folks who catch too many feelings too quickly.
4. Wearing your heart on your sleeve simply makes you more vulnerable to the world’s scumbags. There are some legitimate emotional terrorists out there who get an odd satisfaction out of hurting people – specifically those who are clearly open about their feelings. It’s as if they were bored when you walked by, so they were like, “Oh look, a heart on a sleeve.” Then they gently cupped it into their hands as if the word ‘FRAGILE’ were plastered across it and that mattered to them… Then they stomped on it. Like a thorough, malicious hippity-hoppity session all over your heart. Why? More or less, it’s because they could.
5. Because someone might take screenshots of the text messages of you wearing your heart on your sleeve and show it to ALL of their friends like it’s a funny meme, or a really cringeworthy Vine.
6. Romance with reckless abandon puts you at risk for all of the hurtful experiences previously mentioned, and those traumatizing incidents turn you into a heavily guarded, emotionally impenetrable person. It’s like the naïve child who thinks swimming looks doable, so they jump in the deep end and almost drown. Then they spend months, or even years hesitant to go anywhere near the water. 
