Telephones

      If love-shy men are made nervous by the mere thought of purely
sociable, friendly interaction on a face-to-face basis with others, the idea
of using a telephone does not operate to make them feel anymore com-
fortable. For example, 100 percent of the older love-shys agreed with
the statement: "Telephones have always made me nervous." The anal-
ogous figure for the younger love-shys was 76 percent. In contrast, just
11 percent of the non-shys agreed with the statement. (A figure as high
as 11 percent might well be considered surprisingly high for the non-
shys, given their tendency not to fear face-to-face interaction.)
      And the love-shys had evidently learned to adapt to their fear of
telephones. Many of them dealt with their telephone aversion by writing
letters when they had to communicate with someone. For example, 41
percent of the older love-shys and 30 percent of the younger love-shys
indicated that if given a choice they would invariably choose to write
someone a letter in lieu of calling them on the telephone. None of the
non-shys indicated that they would resort to letter-writing in lieu of
making a telephone call.
      By the way, only 3 percent of the older love-shys kept telephones
in their private apartments. The analogous figure for the younger love-
shys was 23 percent. In contrast, all of the non-shy men kept a private
telephone in their place of abode.