Just curiously, has anyone heard about the concept of love shyness, and has anyone read Brian GIlmartin's book 'Love Shyness'?
Love shyness is what it says on the tin, it means when males are shy about getting into romantic relationships. The book details what some of the causes may be, including a negative parental upbringing and school bullying when growing up. Gilmartin also noted that whatever experiences one goes through, there was a biological basis for love shyness.
Now, while I found the book an absolutely intriguing, absorbing read (it is available on the Internet in PDF), it is a tad outdated. Not only because the research was done around 1980, but because AS was basically an unknown condition then. And much of what Gilmartin describes, is the sort of experience an Aspie or Autie might have anyway. I also found Gilmartin's style a bit too direct, and occasionally harsh and tactless. Sometimes it sounds like he is attacking love-shy people. There are also some pages on occult-related subjects which I didn't bother reading.
Wikipedia has a love shyness article at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love-shyness. This has a link to the book download, that is if anyone's curious enough to read 700 or so pages.
The reason this post is even pertinent, was because it was through reading on love shyness that I came to hear of AS in the first place. Gilmartin states in a letter (written 2001 I think) affixed to the start of the book download that he has found 40% of what he describes as love shy, have diagnosed AS. So I came to realise that AS is often the real cause of the things that were described under the banner of love shyness.
19 Mar 2006, 5:07 pm
