Despite horror stories and Dateline specials, we still feel comfortable broadcasting our life’s every detail online. Perhaps it’s because the computer aids in making us feel a bit braver or we’re in a rush to find the perfect person and the more we share, the better, but there is something to say for not being overly revealing when it comes to dating.

Hypothetical situation: you join a dating site, find a great person, and spend hours emailing and chatting. You decide to meet, have a first date, and spend the entire night talking about Deep and Meaningful Subjects. You wear your heart on your sleeve—perhaps you even sleep with them—and it’s the best first date in the history of first dates.

You plan a second date on to find that you don’t have a lot to say to each other because you’ve spent the past three weeks sharing every detail.

Instead of spending hours on the telephone for days on end, maybe one hour every other day would be more beneficial. Try breakfast or lunch instead of dinner as a first date: sharing a meal with time constraints will stop you both from sitting there all the live-long day. While you may be anxious to get to the good stuff right off the bat, it’s worth going on a series of good dates that may lead to a stable relationship instead of spilling your guts too early and having things fizzle out after a month or so.

It is hard to have restraint when society deems that not only are we capable of having everything right now, we deserve it. But what we deserve, more than the hopeful flutters of a budding relationship, is a relationship based on more than physical attraction and emotions. We deserve to hold ourselves to a higher standard than American mainstream may deem acceptable. With a fifty percent divorce rate in our country, there is obviously something very wrong with the way we go about choosing our mates.

It all comes back to being too revealing. I don’t want you to think that telling stories and sharing information is bad. I mean to point out that it’s helpful to have boundaries when it comes to what you reveal to another person in whom you have romantic interest. Sharing too much too soon can lead to false feelings of intimacy and the potential for some serious heartbreak very early on.

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