Too shy to face a woman

He ducked into a neighbouring aisle and came across Shyness and Love. “It was a relief to feel there was a name for what I was feeling. It was as if Gilmartin was describing me personally.”

The Love-Shy.com forum also attracts men who are “Incel” (involuntarily celibate), who approach potential partners but are constantly rejected. Then there is “true forced loneliness” and “romantic anxiety disorder”.
Many talk about “PUA” techniques, a reference to online “seduction communities” where “pick-up artists” who consider themselves successful with women sell their advice. Aren’t they all just angry, frustrated geeks who need to get out more — or get help? Some of them, yes.

Graphic references

One eye-opening response to a request I posted for interviewees was from “ContentedMan”, 32. Among his more graphic references to experiences with “hookers” he boasts: “LS stopped bothering me when I realised I wasn’t missing much. Love is a euphemism for f***ing.”

Seb, an out-of-work accountant from Sydney, Australia, is a regular Incel poster. At 40, he has never had a girlfriend despite having asked many women out. He says that repeated, “often cruel” rejections have made him suicidal at times. “I have never been intimate with a woman.

“I have used the services of prostitutes, but that doesn’t count.” We talk on the phone. He is polite, nicely-spoken, engaging and funny. Then the bitterness comes through. “Personality means nothing to women, who only care about looks or money.” All women? “All the women I’ve met.”

Self-fulfilling prophecy

But if these men believe that love shyness has “denied” them the opportunity to nd love, is it not a self-fullling prophecy? Some of the posters on Love-Shy.com are as young as 18 or 19 — too young to have written off the chance of romance or to be worried about still being a virgin.

Surely pronouncing another name for what might be “wrong” with these men is just handing them another stick with which to beat themselves? Seb says the rst step to getting better is recognising that something is wrong and the label helps with that. “I believe LS can be overcome,” he says, “but it’s a long, hard road.”

There are drugs to treat shyness, mainstream antidepressants such as Paxil. But the many possible side-effects include sweating, nausea, lowered libido and suicidal tendencies — hardly conducive to romance.

Edelmann believes drugs are best taken in conjunction with cognitive behavioural therapy. “Otherwise you’re helping the symptoms but not addressing the problems of negative thinking patterns and avoidant behaviour.”

The saddest thing about many love-shys is their bitter resignation. “Perceptions are never going to change… this article won’t change people’s mentalities,” posted one. Maybe it won’t.

But spare a thought for the boy in your class or the man in your ofce who eats lunch alone, the uncle who never married, the brother who won’t go out. Abraham Lincoln once said: “Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.”