Too shy to face a woman

Nothing to offer

John would not be photographed for this magazine. For most love-shys, the idea of a photographer knowing about their LS was too shaming — trusting me with their stories was difcult enough when most haven’t even told their families. John is essentially good-humoured and never fatalistic. He hopes he can get better. I ask him if he ever feels depressed or suicidal because of his loneliness. He replies: “There are days when I feel really bad. But I get through it.”

He has a gentle manner and is not unattractive, yet he feels that he has no qualities that appeal to a woman. “I’ve got absolutely nothing to offer.” John shares a room in the family home with his two younger brothers. A very nuclear, isolated family that doesn’t tend to interact is common among LS men. An unhappy childhood is also characteristic. Some describe beatings and put-downs.

Some describe smothering parents. A regular refrain is: “I’d feel embarrassed to tell my parents if I had a girlfriend.” Yet John describes a good relationship with his parents. His mother inuenced his career. “Every day she’d make cakes — she still does. And I learnt with her.” But he can’t talk to her about his love shyness. “I don’t know how to bring it up in conversation.”

The only time John was asked out by a girl, he was 14. He replied: “What if I said yes?” In front of peers, the girl laughed and said: “You’d be dumped.” To this day, he says, if a girl asked him out, he wouldn’t believe she was genuine.

Most psychologists agree that around 20 per cent of us are born shy. In most cases, it doesn’t prevent a person from living a full life. But, says Robert Edelmann, professor of forensic and clinical psychology at the University of Roehampton, “If shyness is exacerbated by early experiences, the associated patterns of negative thinking — ‘I’m not worth speaking to’, or ‘I will say the wrong thing’ — are reinforced. This strengthens the ‘shyness’ neuropathways and can lead to extreme shyness or social anxiety in adulthood.”

Because love-shy men can’t be ofcially diagnosed, no statistics on the incidence of LS exist. Love-Shy.com has more than 500 registered members. Gilmartin studied 300 men aged 19-50 who conformed to the love-shy criteria, comparing them with 200 non-shy men, and concluded that LS affected 1.7m males living in the US — about 1.5 per cent of the male population, which seems incredibly high.

He noted the presence of other social disorders in his subjects: dysthymia (a chronic, free-oating but shallow depression, and lack of energy and enthusiasm for life) and anxiety disorders. “Love-shys enormously fear the experiencing of anxiety,” says Gilmartin. “They suffer from an overactive limbic system, which is the emotional brain.”

Dented credibility

Many of Gilmartin’s subjects — he claims 40 per cent — also had Asperger’s syndrome. His credibility is dented in some people’s eyes, however, by his belief in the paranormal. He relates love shyness to astrology, reincarnation and Kirlian auras (supposed energy elds around people). Other psychologists point to the dangers in creating a new label for what is essentially social-anxiety disorder, a recognised, treatable condition. “It’s natural for very shy people to have difculty approaching the opposite sex,” says Edelmann.

“Creating another term for social-interaction difculties is risky. Once people have a label for what they believe to be true of them, you risk reinforcing the negative thoughts they already have, so they’ll be even more inclined to think ‘Oh, I can’t approach that person, I’m love-shy.’” But some people are very specically shy only in the area of love. Neil, from Worthing, is a quiet, self-deprecating 27-year-old, whose hands trembled over lunch. He grew up on a farm in South Africa where his only company was his brother, and one girl who lived on the next farm, several miles away.

Neil and the girl began to kiss one day, aged about 10. Later, while watching TV, she laid her head on his lap, and his father joked that they looked like boyfriend and girlfriend. Neil felt so upset by this, as if he had behaved wrongly, that he cut ties with the girl, and soon after left for (an all-boys’) boarding school. That was the last time he touched a girl.

Neil has a group of male friends with whom he plays World of Warcraft. He enjoys singing in productions in the Pier Theatre. It is only when it comes to approaching women that he becomes sickeningly anxious. Edelmann says: “A simple rejection of your offer of a date is commonplace. It may happen to a non-shy person a hundred times and they won’t mind.

A very shy person is more likely to be devastated and to avoid being rejected in that way again.” Love-shy men are prone to developing quick and inappropriate attractions to women. After our meeting, Neil posted about it on the forum: “The rst half hour was difcult, then I calmed down and got used to it.

Then I annoyingly found that I was falling for her. This was where I found that it is actually possible to talk openly to someone who you’re attracted to.” Neil only discovered the term “love shyness” a few months ago when avoiding a pretty girl he’d noticed in the library.