Love-shyness

Love-shyness, a specific type of severe chronic shyness that impairs or prevents intimate relationships, is a degree of inhibition and reticence with potential partners that is sufficiently severe to preclude participation in courtship, marriage and family roles. According to this definition, love-shy people find it difficult if not impossible to be assertive in informal situations involving potential romantic or sexual partners. For example, a heterosexual love-shy man will have trouble initiating conversations with women because of strong feelings of social anxiety.

Some psychologists believe that love-shyness can exist without the presence of other phobias or anxiety disorders, like social phobia or social anxiety disorder—that it can be focused only on issues related to intimacy and not be related to other problems. 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.

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. Some psychologists also hold that avoidant personality disorder can be an underlying cause of intimacy avoidance or love-shyness. Some also refer to love-shyness as erotophobia although erotophobia is 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). Others would define erotophobia as one type of love-shyness. 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.

The term "love-shyness" was originally coined by psychologist Brian G. 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. Gilmartin also conducted research studies and formulated treatment and prevention protocols for love-shyness.