Recommended Books for Love-Shys
These books are listed in order of perceived importance for dealing with love-shyness starting with the most important.
Of course, The Love-Shy Survival Guide tops the list. Written by a love-shy for love-shys, this up-to-date book touches on the many aspects of love-shyness and how they trip us up dating-wise. It's not a guaranteed cure for your love-shyness, but it will set you on the right path.
Dr. Brian G. Gilmartin. Shyness and Love: Causes, Consequences, and Treatment. Dr. Gilmartin has generously allowed his now out of print book to be freely downloaded. While not necessarily required reading for love-shys, his is the scientific book that it's all based on. Nothing like reading a book that describes you exactly.
Michael Pilinski's Without Embarrassment: The Social Coward's Totally Fearless Seduction System. Pilinski completely nails it as far as explaining to men exactly what they have to do to form romantic relationships. In addition to speaking right to love-shys, what separates his book from other pickup/seduction books is that other such books focus on how many notches you can add to your bedpost, rather than how to form the basis for a long term relationship. He may market it like any other How to Pick Up Hot Chicks PUA type book, but I believe he directly spells out the hidden curriculum of male dating.
No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. If you wonder why misogynistic jerks get plenty of women while a nice guy like you is forever lonely, you need to read this book. A woman telling a guy he's nice is like a guy saying a fat woman has a great personality.
John Ince. The Politics of Lust. This book explains well the subconscious fear of sex called erotophobia that most everyone in our society harbors. Fear of showing genitals is only the tip of the iceberg as this irrational fear is built into our institutions and society. Perhaps love-shyness can be thought of as the acute version of erotophobia. While erotophobia does not directly cause love-shyness, it works to prevent overcoming it in part by making our anxiety about sex and romance in a sense socially acceptable.
Bradshaw, John. Healing the Shame That Binds You. Bradshaw hosted PBS shows related to his books, and this book sold millions. The subject is toxic shame, which is mainly brought on by our parents. I won't attempt to sum up this complex subject which Bradshaw tackles superbly. Suffice it to say that reading this book will really make you see how each of us is a product of our parents. Every personality flaw of our parents, every "family secret," gets handed down to us almost as effectively as genetics. Since this book can heal people who were physically or sexually abused as children, it will certainly help the love-shy, many of whom had less than perfect home lives.
Intimate Connections by David D. Burns MD is an excellent book written for shy and lonely people. It is a great introduction in Cognitive Behavior Therapy, which simplistically stated is about converting your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. My big epiphany while reading this book is that it's OK to be alone. You have to be able to totally love yourself before you can love others and expect others to love you. A quote: "The belief that you need a loving partner before you can feel happy and secure is one of the major causes of loneliness... Learning to like and love yourself is the key to intimacy... The more needy and desperate you are the more likely you are to get rejected."
Lowndes, Leil. How to Make Anyone Fall in Love With You. A great both for both men and women written by a former shy herself.
Carducci, Bernardo J. Ph.D. Shyness: A Bold New Approach. The best practical, up to date book dealing with shyness in general. Discusses many aspects of shyness including dealing with shy children.
John J Ratey, MD and Catherine Johnson, PhD cowrote Shadow Syndromes. Certain mental disorders such as depression and ADD may show up in people not as full blown disorders, but as mild conditions that can usually fall under the radar of the diagnosing clinician. These shadow syndromes can still reek havoc in our lives. Many love-shys appear to have such conditions especially depression.
The Power of Sexual Surrender by Marie N. Robinson MD Although published in 1959 this is a book for love-shy WOMEN. She provides a dead on description of my mother, and her beliefs mesh well with my theories.
Attwood, Tony. The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome. The best single book on Asperger's Syndrome.
Exhibitionism for the Shy by Carol Queen. Comfortably coax that sexual person out of you even if you are alone. For both sexes.
Romy Miller. Understanding Women: The Definitive Guide to Meeting, Dating, and Dumping, if Necessary. Written by a woman for men, this small book has plenty of good practical advice for clueless guys.
The Chemistry of Joy by Henry Emmons. This book integrates Eastern and Western approaches to depression. This book turned me on to 5-HTP, a easily obtained substitute for prescription SSRI antidepressants (Prozac, Lexapro, etc.) without the unwanted side effects.
Dr. Susan Forward. Toxic Parents. Even though this book is geared towards adults who were physically or sexually abused as children, many love-shys were emotionally abused as children (and often as adults too) and need to follow a similar procedure for dealing with it.
Dr. Alexander Avila. The Gift of Shyness: Embrace Your Shy Side and Find Your Soul Mate. Finally a book that accepts that shyness is not a social liability. Use your shyness to your advantage.
What Do You Say After You Say Hello? by Eric Berne, MD. We live our lives by scripts we internalize during childhood, and love-shys follow life scripts casting them in loser roles. Strange that modern psychology has not embraced his findings.
Martin Llyod-Elliott. Secrets of Sexual Body Language. Plenty of color photographs showing examples of various body language examples.
Wygant, David. Always Talk to Strangers.
Osho Zen Tarot Just open up to a page and start reading. Plenty of insightful and uplifting wisdom no matter what your religion.
The Shy Man Syndrome. 1989. A condensed version of Dr. Gilmartin's Shyness & Love.
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. A feminist tome good for helping women get over body image issues.
The Passive Man's Guide to Seduction by Franklin Parlamis. A thin book with some good advice. Claims to welcome us into the era of the passive man.
The following books are Honorable Mentions. They are great books but do not either deal directly with love-shyness or don't provide useful therapeutic advice.
Theresa L. Crenshaw, MD The Alchemy of Love and Lust: How Our Sex Hormones Influence Our Relationships. It is not simply that men's bodies have testosterone and women's bodies contain estrogen. Both sexes have both, and there are plenty of other hormones, too. She also discusses the real yet subtle male menopause, andropause, when male testosterone levels start dropping off in middle age.
Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus. An excellent book that speaks poetically for the loners out there. I can't endorse it regarding love-shyness, because it implies that being alone is OK and offers nothing to break our loneliness.
William Stillman. Autism and the God Connection. This book provides plenty of anecdotal proof that autistics have a closer connection with the spiritual, something I've certainly felt in my life. He now has a second book with even more examples of young autistics communicating with animals, angels and God called The Soul of Autism: Looking Beyond Labels to Unveil Spiritual Secrets of the Heart Savants.
Asperger's Syndrome and Bullying: Strategies and Solutions by Nick Dubin. Since both love-shys and those on the autism spectrum are frequent targets for bullies, this book may help one deal with this childhood trauma.
Painfully Shy: How to Overcome Social Anxiety and Reclaim Your Life by Barbara Markway and Gregory Markway.
A Natural History of Sex: The ecology and evolution of mating behavior by Adrian Forsyth. This thorough and fascinating study of sex in the animal world puts human mating behavior in perspective.
Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (but were afraid they'd ask) by Justin Richardson MD and Mark A. Schuster MD, PhD. I recommend this book to parents as an excellent, thorough, even-keeled book explaining how to deal with your child's sexuality. Nothing to do with loveshy, but reading it helped bring closure to my childhood and what I missed. Also this book functions as a good sex ed book since it discusses anatomy, the various birth control methods and sexually transmitted diseases.
You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. Love-shys have plenty of negativity to remove from their heads. In my book I recommend The Secret for getting on the path to the positive, but Hay's book is much better mainly because it is much more practical. Be one of millions like me who made a major breakthrough in being happy thanks to reading this book.
