The Powerful Impact of
Preadolescent Infatuations
There is a very cruel and curious paradox in the psychoemotional
development of love-shy men which deserves special attention. From
the standpoint of overt behavior any disinterested person would judge
love-shy men to be (1) extremely "late starters", and (2) perhaps not
especially interested in women at all. Most people tend to judge
others by overtly manifested behavior. Indeed, most of us tend to view overt
behavior as constituting a reasonably accurate barometer of a person's
wishes, values, attitudes, feelings and aspirations. We tend to view such
behavior as a good index as to what is actually going on inside of
a person's head. And so it is perfectly understandable that most of us
would view as "disinterested" any man in his late 30s or 40s who has
seldom or never dated women.
But as I have argued throughout this book, severe and chronic
shyness blocks the normal exercising of free choice and self-determination.
The love-shy cannot allow their behavior to reflect their deepest wishes,
desires, values, etc., because doing so would overcome them with severe
feelings of anxiety. In fact, the mere thought of experiencing this anxiety
is so painfully forbidding to the intractably love-shy person that he will
not allow himself to even fantasize making plans to do the kinds of
things he would love to do. To be sure, the love-shy man does spend
a tremendous amount of time and energy fantasizing about being with
a girl whom he can love. But these fantasies never extend to the practical
business of engineering a viable plan for actually winning the affections of
a girl. The severely love-shy man cannot permit himself to engineer a
plan to telephone a girl or start a conversation with one at work or
school, or to ask a girl who is attractive to him for a lunch or a coffee
date. He cannot calm himself sufficiently to do these things because the
fear of the anxiety that would be created from merely thinking about
doing them is far too much for him.
