Love shy: Difference between revisions

Some psychologists believe that love-shyness can exist without the presence of phobias or anxiety disorders, like [[mentalcel|social phobia]] or social anxiety disorder—that it can be focused only on issues related to intimacy and not be related to other problems.<ref name="Brian G 1989" /> Others believe that, regardless of whether love-shyness is tied to other social anxiety problems, it nevertheless develops its own unique issues that must be attended to in order to effect the fullest recovery for the afflicted individual; that, regardless of the causes, the long-term course of a love-shy person's life is profoundly affected in unique ways, because of the unique and paramount importance of personal intimacy in one's life, thereby setting love-shyness apart from other phobias and requiring special therapeutic attention and support.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Love-shyness may be a stand-alone phobia (independent of other phobias), or may also be a subset of social anxiety disorder, also sometimes called social phobia.<ref name="Brian G 1989" /><ref name="Crozier, W. Ray 2001" />  Some psychologists also hold that avoidant personality disorder can in some cases be an underlying cause of intimacy avoidance or love-shyness in certain individuals.<ref>Gale Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, chapter, Avoidant personality disorder</ref><ref>Shyness & Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatments</ref> Some also refer to love-shyness as [[erotophobia]] or [[genophobia]] although both are also seen by some as being a much more narrowly-defined problem than love-shyness (tied only to sex and not having the broader spectrum of love-shyness, which is seen as being more multi-dimensional).<ref>title: Effects of anonymity, gender, and erotophilia on the quality of data obtained from self-reports of socially sensitive behaviors, journal: Journal of Behavioral Medicine, year=2002, volume=25, issue=5, pages=439–467, doi=10.1023/A:1020419023766</ref> Others would define erotophobia as one type of love-shyness.<ref name="Brian G 1989" /> In some cases, another specific phobia, [[body dysmorphic disorder]] (a phobia of being seen as physically unattractive) may also be an underlying cause of love-shyness.<ref name="Phillips, K. A. 1996 p141">Author: Phillips, K. A., year: 1996, title: The broken mirror: Understanding and treating body dysmorphic disorder, page: 141, location: New York, publisher: Oxford University Press, isbn=0-19-508317-2</ref>  "Love avoidant", is a common colloquial synonym of love-shy.

The term "love-shyness" was originally coined by psychologist [[Brian Gilmartin]], who estimated that love-shyness afflicts approximately 1.5% of American males and will prevent about 1.7 million U.S. males from ever marrying or experiencing intimate sexual contact with women.<ref name="Brian G 1989" /> Gilmartin also conducted research studies and formulated treatment and prevention protocols for love-shyness.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin had six criteria for each "love-shy man" he included in his study:<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin's data collection included only heterosexual men.  According to Gilmartin, people of all ages, all races, all sexual orientations, and all genders can be love-shy. However, in Gilmartin's opinion, the negative effects of love-shyness manifest themselves primarily in 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", "highly social" college students.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987"><nowiki>name: Brian Gilmartin, year=1987, title: Peer Group Antecedents of Severe Love-shyness in Males, journal=Journal of Personality, volume=55, issue=3, pages=467–489, doi=10.1111/j.1467-6494.1987.tb00447.x }}</nowiki></ref>

When psychological conditions are analyzed, usually the mental state is most focused on.  However, physical symptoms are just as important.  In Shyness and Love, Gilmartin states:

He then states that the ability to breathe through the nose is associated with the feeling of freedom. This is also important in school athletics. As a result, many love-shy children don’t breathe properly, and are left out from many team sports.  Usually, this form of sinus congestion is genetic, and surgically treated.

The love-shy men in Gilmartin's sample had significant differences in temperament from the non-shy men.  They scored significantly lower on [[low inhib|extroversion]], and higher on neuroticism than the non-shy men on the [[Eysenck Personality Questionnaire]].<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" />  In Hans Eysenck's terms, they had a "melancholic" temperament.  Most of the love-shy men (and only few of the non-shy men) reported that their mothers had often said that they had been quiet babies, which Gilmartin suggests is evidence that love-shys are more likely to fit [[Jerome Kagan]]'s description of behavioral social inhibition.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" /> A number of the men also had a difficult time being born and sometimes needed a c-section to be performed.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" />

The men had various degrees of sensitivity to things such as touch, taste, light, and other forms of stimuli. They tended to be more hypersensitive than the non-shy men.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" />

Most of the love-shy men, but none of the non-shy men, reported never having ''any'' friends; not even acquaintances.  The vast majority of love-shy men reported being [[Bully|bullied]] by children their own age due to their inhibitions and interests, 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. Even as adults, the love-shy men reported remaining friendless and abused by other people.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" />

Love-shy men reported this lack of acceptance by others as causing them to feel excessively lonely and depressed. However, this also caused the men not to want anything to do with same-sex individuals.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

From the data Gilmartin uncovered about the love-shy's family life, they grew up in dysfunctional families.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" />

Most of the men reported that their parents and societal attitudes pressured them into being "real boys" because of the men's personalities as children. A huge portion of the men also suffered from physical abuse by their parents and often could not rely on them for emotional support. This also extended to their relatives and even as adults still could not rely on them for emotional support. It is possible that their parents' abuse and uncaring attitude to their son's emotions, desires and interests were responsible for part of their social inhibitions. Even as grown men, the love-shy men's parents expressed that they were disappointed to have them as sons and still belittled them for their current situations. Most were upset that their sons never married and had no grandchildren to leave their heirlooms to. It was also stated that they seldom or even never visited their sons. Ironically, though most of the love-shy men disliked or even hated their parents, they visited them constantly, because they were the only people they could interact with and also to receive financial support despite also receiving heavy hazing. This hazing would cause the men to feel very depressed and heart-broken. This is stated in the chapters of his book "Parents as a Cause for Love-shyness" and "The Family as a Hot Bed for Rage and Belittlement".

In his recruited samples, Gilmartin had found 86% of the non-shy younger men had a sister around while growing up, as opposed to 41% of the love-shy younger men, with 29% of the love-shy older men never having had a sister. In the same groups, over 50% of the non-shy young group had grown up with at least two sisters, compared to only 6% of the younger and 3% of the older love-shy men. Gilmartin also noted that none of the love-shy older men and very few of the  love-shy younger men had any adults to rely on for emotional support growing up. Also it is noted that many of the love-shy men had a small network of cousins, 90% of them with 1 or less, 10% had 2-3; none had more than 3.<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" /> Some of the men expressed that their siblings achieved intimacy with [[relationship]]s and were preferred by their parents much more than themselves.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin's love-shy men were poorly-adjusted, as they were unhappy with their lives and high in rates of anxiety disorders, like social phobia, avoidant [[personality]] disorder, body dysmorphic disorder,<ref name="Phillips, K. A. 1996 p141" /> social anxiety disorder or other anxiety-related problems. He found that the love-shy men had considerably more violent fantasies, were very pessimistic and cynical about the world, 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, loneliness and alienation. A small number of the men would often try to disassociate from reality through various means, including [[addiction]]s of various types or other kinds of escapist habits like excessive daydreaming or otherwise spending a lot of time in fantasy. Gilmartin noted that about 40% of the older love-shy men had seriously considered committing [[suicide]].<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

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 minimum wage jobs such as taxi-driving and door-to-door canvassing. At the time of Gilmartin's research (1979–1982), 3.6% of college graduates in the USA were unemployed.  Yet the older love-shy men had a disproportionate [[unemployment]] rate of 16% because of their perceived bad past work experiences. As a result, all of the love-shy men were in the [[lower middle class]] or lower.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

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, often having little discretionary spending for luxuries, and many were forced to live in less attractive neighborhoods.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

According to Gilmartin, the love-shy tended to prefer vocal love ballads such as [[Broadway theatre]] music, brassy jazz music, easy listening, film soundtracks and light classical music, but not traditional classical music. A few also mentioned having a strong liking for country and western. Rock music of almost every kind was disliked by the love-shy, but only on an aesthetic level, not on moral grounds. Gilmartin noted that surprisingly few of the love-shy men mentioned female singers.

Gilmartin concluded that the majority of love-shy men prefer music with emotional/escapist themes and rich, beautiful melody. As a result, love-shy males dislike music that is noisy, loud, dissonant or amelodic in their point of view. The non-shy men Gilmartin interviewed typically enjoyed rock music and would only buy rock albums. The music love-shys enjoyed was considered boring by most of the non-shy men.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin compiled a list of movies between 1945 and 1980 that were most often seen by the American love-shy in his study.  According to Gilmartin, the full list of 63 repeatedly seen movies can be classified into two categories, "heavy", emotionally engrossing love stories, and escapist musicals with a strong romantic flavor.

In contrast, the movies most often seen by non love-shy men were classified as, action-adventure, science fiction or fantasy/superhero, light comedy, and crime drama.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin estimates that love-shyness afflicts approximately 1.5% of American males. According to Gilmartin, love-shyness is, like most human psychological characteristics, the result of some combination of [[biology|biological]] factors ([[genetics|genetic]]/[[developmental biology|developmental]]) and environmental factors (experiences of [[child abuse]], [[post-traumatic stress disorder]] (PTSD), [[culture|cultural]], [[family|familial]], [[religion|religious]], etc.).<ref name="Brian G. Gilmartin 1987" /> Gilmartin believes that shyness is a condition which needs to be cured. He says in his book “Shyness is ''never'' ‘good’. Shyness obviates free choice and self-determination, and it stands squarely in the way of responsible self-control and self-management.” Again, he states “Simply put, ''shyness is never healthy''.”

With so many negative stimuli from crucial [[relationship]]s in one's childhood, the love-shy boy becomes a [[social isolation|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 and social anxiety becomes a '[[Virtuous circle and vicious circle|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.

Gilmartin argued that love-shyness would have the most severe effect on heterosexual males, because of gender roles. This is because heterosexual men are almost always expected to take the more assertive role in [[dating]] situations and to be the ones to initiate intimacy with potential romantic partners, whereas heterosexual women generally take the more passive role, as assertiveness on their part is far less crucial in successfully developing a romantic [[relationship]]. He claims that it may be possible for both shy women and homosexual men to become involved in intimate [[relationship]]s without needing to take any initiative, simply by waiting for a more assertive man to initiate the [[relationship]], or in the case of lesbians, a more assertive woman. 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 definitely not the case for heterosexual men. Love-shy heterosexual men normally have no informal social contact with women.  They cannot date, [[marriage|marry]] or have children, and many of these men never experience any form of intimate sexual contact. He also noted that for moral reasons, none of the love-shy men sought [[prostitute]]s. Some of the love-shys were partaking in [[mail-order bride]] agencies, but the results of these efforts were not pursued in the study.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Gilmartin noted that because of their ''perceived'' lack of interest in women, love-shy men are frequently assumed to be [[homosexual]].  Homosexual men would make advances to the love-shy men, but these advances would be rejected. Gilmartin also noted that many love-shy men are not interested in [[friendship]]s with other men.<ref name="Brian G 1989" />

Love-shyness has not, to date, been recognized as a distinct [[mental disorder]] by the [[World Health Organization]] or [[American Psychiatric Association]]. But the argument is being made in the community of mainstream clinical psychology that intimacy issues are so unique and so core to one's humanity that love-shyness does constitute a legitimate area of clinical attention, as well as meriting further research.<ref name="Brian G 1989" /> Some of the psychological and social problems of the love-shy men could be considered [[autism|autistic]] because of the men's trouble in regards to peers, social interactions, and adjustment to change. Years later when asked in an email, Gilmartin felt that 40% of severely love-shy men would have [[Asperger's Syndrome]] or [[ADHD]]. Many psychologists believe that social phobia or a more general pattern of avoidant [[personality]] disorder or social anxiety disorder could also be indicated, although many also concede that these issues may coalesce specifically into a phobia of intimate [[relationship]]s, thereby forming a unique or semi-unique phobia with its own parameters and idiosyncrasies. Some described Love-shyness sufferers may also be blocked from intimate [[relationship]]s due to [[body dysmorphic disorder]] (a phobia that causes one to fear that one is physically unattractive).<ref name="Phillips, K. A. 1996 p141" />