The term love-shyness was first used by psychologist Brian G. Gilmartin to describe a specific type of severe chronic shyness. According to his definition, published in Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatments, love-shy people find it difficult to be assertive in informal situations involving potential romantic or sexual partners. For example, a love-shy heterosexual male will have trouble initiating conversations with women because of strong feelings of anxiety. Dr. Gilmartin researched this phenomenon exclusively in heterosexual males.

Gilmartin's definition

Gilmartin had seven criteria for each "love-shy" man he included in his study:

• He is male.
• He is a person who very rarely goes out socially with women.
• He is a person without a past history of any emotionally close, meaningful relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature with any member of the opposite sex.
• He is a person who has suffered and is continuing to suffer emotionally because of a lack of meaningful female companionship. In short, he is a person who desperately wishes to have a relationship with a woman, but does not have one because of shyness.
• He is a man who becomes extremely anxiety-ridden over so much as the mere thought of asserting himself vis-à-vis a woman in a casual, friendly way. This is the essence of "love-shyness".
• He is a man who is strictly heterosexual in his romantic and erotic orientations. In other words, he is a person who is in no way a homosexual.

Gilmartin did not rule out the existence of female or homosexual love-shy people, but he doubted they would feel the same negative effects as heterosexual men, and suspected that the condition would manifest very differently in them.

Results of Gilmartin's research

According to Gilmartin, people of all ages, all sexual orientations, and both genders can be love-shy. However, in Gilmartin's opinion, the negative effects of love-shyness manifest themselves almost exclusively in heterosexual men. Gilmartin's study included only heterosexual men. He studied 200 love-shy college students (aged 19-24), 100 older love-shy men (aged 35-50), and a comparison group of 200 "non-shy" college students. Gilmartin's non-shy men were not intended to represent the average male, and were recruited only if they were highly social.

Interactions with peers

Most of the love-shy men, and none of the non-shy men, reported never having any friends. The vast majority of love-shy men reported being bullied by children their own age, while none of the non-shy men did, and love-shy men were less likely to fight back against bullies. Around half of the love-shy men reported being bullied or harassed as late as high school, while none of the non-shy men did.

Adjustment and Mental Illness

Gilmartin's love-shy men were poorly-adjusted and high in rates of mental illness. He found that the love-shy men had considerably more violent fantasies, were much more likely to believe that nobody cared about them, and were much more likely to have difficulties concentrating. He also found a tendency in some of the love-shy men to stare compulsively at women with whom they were infatuated or even stalk them, but without being able to talk to them, which sometimes got them in trouble with school authorities because of the perceived threat. Most of the love-shy men reported experiencing frequent feelings of depression. Also, many love-shy men have parents who disallow them to go on dates and have trouble circumventing it; or they can convince themselves of such restrictions regardless of actually having permission to date. Also, many love-shy men have had their privacy over-invaded.

Career, money and education

Gilmartin noted that the 100 older love-shy men studied were experiencing well above average career instability. Even though almost all of these older love-shys had successfully completed higher education, their salaries were well below the US average. They were typically, if anything, underemployed and were working in jobs such as taxi driving, or in lower level clerical or telemarketing jobs. At the time of Gilmartin's research (1979-1982), 3.6% of college graduates in the USA were unemployed. The unemployment rate for the older love-shy men was 16%. Some were even close to the poverty line.

Being single, the older love-shy men all lived in apartments. As a consequence of their social-sexual inhibitions, and subsequently limited social network, their financial situations were generally less fortunate, and many were forced to live in less attractive neighbourhoods. It is notable that none of the older love-shy men Gilmartin studied owned a home. While many of these men were excellent students, the effects of their shyness had a negative impact on their social lives and diminished many opportunities in their careers in the same manner as it inhibited their love lives.

Other notable attributes

According to Gilmartin, many love-shy men show the following patterns:

• often feel women are more privileged than men
• are in below-average physical shape as a group
• tend to be less interested in sports
• tend to be more interested in movies and music, and prefer watching different types of movies from non-love-shy men
• place great, often disproportionate importance on physical beauty (especially facial beauty)
• are not as likely to be interested in male friendships
• are less patriotic
• are less religious, especially christianity
• 16% of his sample were unemployed (p. 442)
• has experienced homelessness or poverty for the large part of their lives
• develop interest in females at an earlier age than usual, particularly in the third to fifth grade range
• often only want to have female children
• often have a hard time expressing their emotions
• are sometimes passive aggressive
• are melancholic
• often have had a physically difficult birth
• have low energy levels; show little interest in physical and sporting activities, as well as difficulty getting out of bed in the morning
• were usually quiet as infants, while non-love-shy men are rarely so
• often have tense, nervous, angry and/or two-faced mothers who disallowed dates with girls
• often have no sisters, and rarely have more than one
• often are very serious
• often had no adults to turn to for emotional support as children, and continue to be that way as adults
• often felt they had little influence on family decisions as children
• are easily upset
• have demanding parents who invade their privacy; thus have privacy prolems to suffer
• often go through an excessive amount of psychological trauma, of which love-shyness can be the aftermath; many of the above items can be precursors of it
• parents were overprotective
• grew up in isolation

However, some have noted that those who are not love-shy may also exhibit a number of these patterns.

Gilmartin's theory

Causes of love-shyness

Gilmartin estimates that love-shyness afflicts approximately 1.5 percent of American males. According to Gilmartin, love-shyness is, like most human psychological characteristics, the result of some combination of biological (genetic/developmental) and environmental (cultural, familial, religious, etc.) factors (see also: nature versus nurture). Gilmartin believes that shyness is a condition which needs to be cured. He claims that "SHYNESS IS NEVER HEALTHY" (his capitalisation).

He mentions several possible biological causes of love-shyness, most notably low maternal testosterone during fetal development, nasal polyps and hypoglycemia.

Crucial factors exacerbating negative development during the love-shy male's childhood are:

• School bullying. Love-shy boys are vulnerable to bullying from their peer group, due to their shyness and inhibition. Non-conformism to peer group norms also makes the boy a target through no fault of his own.
• Parental upbringing. Where a child receives primarily negative stimuli from his parents (e.g. corporal punishment, verbal abuse, criticism, 'put-downs', negative comparisons, indifference) this will most likely cause the boy to retreat further and further into his 'shell'.

With so many negative stimuli from crucial relationships in one's childhood, the love-shy boy becomes a social isolate. He learns to associate these crucial interactions (i.e. with parents, peer group) with hurt feelings and is likely to avoid social interaction. Social isolation becomes a 'vicious circle' for the love-shy individual as the years go by, and inhibits his chances in interaction with the opposite sex, as well as in other crucial areas of life such as his career.

Love-shyness, sexual orientation, and gender

Gilmartin believes that love-shyness would have the most severe effect on heterosexual males, because of gender roles. He claims that it may be possible for both shy women and homosexual men to become involved in intimate relationships without needing to take any initiative, simply by waiting for a more assertive man to initiate the relationship. However, this is based on speculation rather than fact, as there are many homosexual men who have difficulty finding a partner due to shyness. According to Gilmartin, shy women are as likely or even more likely due to their love-shyness as non-shy women to date, to marry, and to have children, while this is not the case for heterosexual men. Love-shy heterosexual men normally have no informal social contact with women (virtually by definition). They cannot date, marry, or have children, and many of these men never experience any form of intimate sexual contact. Gilmartin found that third parties such as parents and friends are often inconsiderate of the difficulties of love-shy men, and are reluctant to aid them in finding girlfriends.

Gilmartin notes that love-shy men are frequently assumed to be homosexual, because of their perceived lack of interest in women. Additionally, he notes that many heterosexual love-shy men are not interested in friendships with other men. This, combined with their lack of success in initiating contact with women, causes feelings of loneliness, alienation, and sometimes depression.

Love-shyness and mainstream psychology

Love-shyness is not recognized as a mental disorder by the World Health Organisation or American Psychiatric Association. It does share some characteristics with commonly recognized mental disorders, however.

Love-shyness and Erotomania

The core of the erotomania syndrome is that the affected person has a delusional belief that another person, usually of higher social status, but not always, is secretly in love with them. The sufferer may also believe that the subject of their delusion secretly communicates their love by subtle methods such as body posture, body language, arrangement of household objects and other seemingly innocuous acts, and thinking that the person is talking about them (or, if the person is a public figure, through clues in the media). The object of the delusion usually has little or no contact with the delusional person, who often believes that the object initiated the fictional relationship. Erotomanic delusions are typically found as the primary symptom of delusional disorder, or in the context of schizophrenia.

References

• Brian G. Gilmartin (1987). Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment
• Brian G. Gilmartin (1987). "Peer group antecedents of severe love-shyness in males". Journal of Personality 55: 467-89 .
• Brian G. Gilmartin (1989). The Shy Man Syndrome: Why Men Become Love-Shy and How They Can Overcome It.
• Elizabeth Rice Allgeier (1988). Book Review: Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment. Journal of Sex Research 25 (2): 309-315.
• Sue Johanson (2004). Sex, Sex, and More Sex
• Judy Kuriansky (2004). Complete Idiot's Guide to Dating Third Edition