# Do you wear your heart on your sleeve?



## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

Apologies if the question is a bit insensitive, but I'm just really curious to know how everyone feels/thinks about the phrase/OP. The reason I ask stems from the fact that lately I've been accused of doing the exact opposite of the OP. Mysterious, aloof, always appear to be hiding something, were some of the few remarks that have been thrown at me by close friends and people that I interact with on a daily basis. They suggested that I should perhaps be a bit more open and express my true emotions, something that I acknowledge I struggled to do for the past several years. Maybe there's a cure for me yet!

Anyways, chime away, let me know if you have no trouble at all expressing how you feel, or if you're in the same boat as me. 

Also, any advice no how to overcome such a predicament would be highly appreciated.

TPS


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I do tend to wear my heart on my sleeve. I get enthusiasms and have to express them. But this is tempered by timidity - I hate any aggro and if my opinion is liable to cause upset, I keep it to myself. And I'm not quite as heart-to-mouth as I was in my younger days, when I frequently put my foot in it - quite an anatomical contortion - and then agonised for days.

You don't post all that often, Proud Squire, but I have never thought of you as hiding anything. The lovely poetry group that you founded seems to show that you *can* express your enthusiasm. So relax a little - you're among friends!


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## Guest (Sep 29, 2014)

For me, it depends on the emotion. I find I can be accused of not showing any emotion when what is actually the case is that I've not had an emotional reaction to what I'm being told. Those who know me well enough know that I can get carried away by things I can get passionate about - to that extent, my heart does suddenly appear on my sleeve. But I'm probably quite restrained, and prefer to manage how I feel about things.

Actually, now I think about it, whilst I can have an intellectual reaction to things that would match someone else's emotional, for some reason, the emotional is regarded of higher value. If the sight of tragedy on TV leads one person to sob and wail and another to articulate an understanding of the tragedy without shedding a tear, what does it matter?


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## rrudolph (Sep 15, 2011)

I did it for a while, but I found I was getting blood all over everything so I had it put back in my chest where it belongs.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

That kind of thing doesn't work for me. On the contrary, I'm the kind of person that people keep handing their sleeved-heart to.


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

In some circles I am considered rather cold and indifferent -- my parents are among those -- while in others I have quite the reverse reputation. Some days ago someone remarked that she had never known me out of love, which prompted me to purchase _Hazlitt in Love_, as Peter Patmore had said the very same of Hazlit: "I have never known him out of love." It does not reach the levels of _Liber Amoris_, though -- lucky me! I fear I rarely have patience for any sentimentalism but my own: something I am working on! "The barrenest mortal of all is the sentimentalist", Carlyle declared! 'Tis too harsh, if not entirely untrue; but I agree with Ruskin, in stating that "it is not less sensation we want, but more":

The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the night-dew of the grave.​
I had never had any problems telling anyone about even my most inmost, deepest, worrying problems. If someone is willing to hear me speak about my most profound issues, I will readily do so. My by know famous love of poetry and forceful, Carlylese, Ruskian rhetoric, coupled with my disdain for secrecy and openness to indiscretions about subjects close to me, have earned me the reputation of a bit of a Romantic (with and without a capital letter..) at school; but I think I don't go too far in it. I despise signs of sentimentalism, false and hollow passions, and fake affections. When the emotion is true, however, I will heave a languid sigh with he who expresses it! The many tears I've shed reading the most elegiac passages of Hazlitt, Young's _Night Thoughts_, De Quincey's _Confessions _and _Suspiria de Profundis_, and poetry by Goethe, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Milton, Wilbur and many other works of prose and poetry, are indicative of it. As George Eliot said when speaking of Young, "In a man under the immediate pressure of a great sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations; we are prepared to see him turn away a weary eye from sunlight and flowers and sweet human faces, as if this rich and glorious life had no significance but as a preliminary of death; we do not criticise his views, we compassionate his feelings."

Beware what earth calls happiness; beware
All joys, but joys that never can expire.
Who builds on less than an immortal base,
Fond as he seems, condemns his joys to death.
Mine died with thee, Philander! thy last sigh
Dissolved the charm; the disenchanted earth
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers?
Her golden mountains, where? all darken'd down
To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears: 
The great magician's dead!

...

This is the desert, this the solitude:
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault, 
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth, is shadow, all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is Folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more!
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, 
The twilight of our day, the vestibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and death,
Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar,
This gross impediment of clay remove,
And make us embryos of existence free.​


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

My thoughts and opinions are so strange to most people that I've learned to A) spend more time listening and B) to assume a "neutral" position and talk very abstractedly, not taking sides. Because of this, I've actually been compared to Socrates, of all people!

But here in TC it's different. Here I write silly things all the time. Still, I write those silly things in a silly manner, so that people might mistake me for being ironic, which buys me some living space.


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## ProudSquire (Nov 30, 2011)

@Ingélou 
I think you might be right that I do need to relax a bit, which I plan on doing a lot of.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I can be emotional and I can be volatile and brutally frank and sarcastic.

My other qualities are fine, however.


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## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

I like to express enthusiasm for things I am enthused about, but I am much less vocal about my passions than I used to be when I was younger. There's not much point in sharing my excitement for a new Xenakis or Shostakovich or even Beethoven album: few share my passion. The same goes for the books I'm reading, etc.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

I am not emotional, but very passionate. There is a big difference. Being "emotional" usually indicates a lack of control over emotions. I Used to be much more emotional when I was a young lad. My parents always told me, "control your emotions or they will control you. When they control you, there is very little good that will come from it." Boy were they ever right.

There's a time a place for everything. So in (not so) short, no. I do not wear my heart on my sleeve.

To the OP. There is nothing really good about wearing your heart on your sleeve, however, when you trust those who are close to you - friends and family - it can really enrich your life when you can express how you feel about certain things and have a meaningful conversation with someone else.

V


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I have a similar issue Proud Squire. Many people who don't know me very well seem to think I'm intimidating, especially if they are my peers. Especially short women, who can be afraid of tall, dark haired/featured men who don't smile at them, aka, don't wear their hearts on their sleeves. On the interior, I am full of passion and ideas, and when I find an opportunity to open up I can converse very well, maybe even in an animated/and or humorous and relaxed way. Most people seem to get comfortable with me at first by assuming that in the humor context, I'm the "straight man(not referring to sexual orientation)" which I guess I am. In other words, I'm funny in the less overt way once you accept that I can be funny, and if I were absolutely present and on top of things and less absent minded, I might be more successful, and maybe somewhat less likable. 

On my bad days, I afraid I'm so constrained and my body language so limited, that some people are weirded out by me(hell, maybe I do that on my good days with some people). I try not to have bad days.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

I have certainly found you full of passion & ideas on TalkClassical, clavichorder. I think it's a pity we can't get to know you in the non-virtual world - you seem like a nice person.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Cheyenne said:


> I had never had any problems telling anyone about even my most inmost, deepest, worrying problems. If someone is willing to hear me speak about my most profound issues, I will readily do so. My by know famous love of poetry and forceful, Carlylese, Ruskian rhetoric, coupled with my disdain for secrecy and openness to indiscretions about subjects close to me, have earned me the reputation of a bit of a Romantic (with and without a capital letter..) [/INDENT]


I can relate, save for the reputation of being a romantic. In my environment, I am not in a position to catch wind of what the nature of my reputation is, if it is much at all. And these days I keep to myself in the public sense so as not to get involved and thus distracted from my studies, which I really need to focus on, not because I'm Mr. Serious Student, but because I am Mr. Repenting Student, who has years of slacking to make up for.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

I do, and that is not something I am proud of. My self-improvement program includes getting rid of this quality. However, the very act of answering this question constitutes wearing one's heart on one's sleeve.


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## Posie (Aug 18, 2013)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I do, and that is not something I am proud of. My self-improvement program includes getting rid of this quality. However, the very act of answering this question constitutes wearing one's heart on one's sleeve.


I see nothing wrong with it.  As much as we may want our intellect to be the driving force of our actions, it will always be our emotions, whichever the most prevalent ones may be.

Some emotions are impossible to hide anyway.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I do not wear my heart on my sleeve -never did, never will. For those who do, it would be a good idea to stop.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

^^^Easier said than done! We are what we are!!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I wear mine in the the same way you'll see a pack of cigs rolled into the short sleeve of a t-shirt, the end of sleeve seam looking like a neat little cuff, as seen in many a fifties film usually in depicting tough guys or James Dean or the males of a pack of juvenile delinquents. 

That way people think it is a very tough and cool heart... or maybe just that I smoke hearts.

Works wonderfully as a sort of social filter, though.


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## Posie (Aug 18, 2013)

For those of you who are in denial, you cannot hide your fear of violated boundaries.
...unless you are a psychopath.

It is perfectly possible to validate the feelings of others while protecting your personal boundaries.


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

marinasabina said:


> For those of you who are in denial, you cannot hide your fear of violated boundaries.
> ...unless you are a psychopath.
> 
> It is perfectly possible to validate the feelings of others while protecting your personal boundaries.


What do you mean?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I wear mine in the the same way you'll see a pack of cigs rolled into the short sleeve of a t-shirt, the end of sleeve seam looking like a neat little cuff, as seen in many a fifties film usually in depicting tough guys or James Dean or the males of a pack of juvenile delinquents.
> 
> That way people think it is a very tough and cool heart... or maybe just that I smoke hearts.
> 
> Works wonderfully as a sort of social filter, though.


My heart is always there... it's just wrapped in a thin veil of intellectualism.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

No .Sometimes I wear my gall bladder on my sleeve, sometimes my spleen, sometimes even my appendix .


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## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

There's no cure because it's not an illness. Some people are more overtly emotional than others, the level of openness considered normal varies from culture to culture (because they couldn't just not care!, they need to set a parameter for everything, bunch of ********.)


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

I always do, more so on the internet, which has a woefully disinhibiting effect on me! Then I get all embarrassed, having over shared. I need to get over either the over sharing or the embarrassment!


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## geekfreak (Mar 18, 2015)

well that's a biggest YES...:angel:


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