First Steps to Overcoming Love-Shyness
After you have accepted personal responsibility for overcoming your love-shyness, you are ready for action.
One first step is understanding and accepting that love-shyness is a serious condition that you need to deal with as such. Don't think as I did, I'll focus on women after I graduate and get a good job. It won't work. Although it's not life threatening (except for suicide), you need to treat it more like a cancer than a minor irritating skin rash. How much is it worth to you to be able to date and marry successfully? Hopefully a lot.
Join a support group. Since no in-person love-shy support groups exist yet, choose an online forum. Being able to ask questions and discuss issues that only other love-shys can understand is almost cathartic.
Start seeing a therapist. I highly recommend a therapist of the opposite sex as yourself. Show her Gilmartin's book as proof of love-shyness. Shop around to find one you feel comfortable with and whom you can place your confidence in and who can believe that love-shyness is not just social anxiety disorder. If you don't have insurance to cover it, do internet searches with terms like “sliding scale counseling” and “low cost therapy” along with your city to find affordable options.
With help from your therapist, diagnose any possible related conditions. Gilmartin estimates 40% of love-shys have Asperger's syndrome. You may also have mild forms of OCD, etc.
Most likely you suffer from depression. Continuous low level depression is typical for love-shys and causes a decrease in already low social functioning. Men tend to not deal with depression, so they often express their depression through substance abuse, unnecessary risk taking and other self-destructive behavior. Do something about it before it gets out of hand.
