The term love shyness was first used by psychologist Brian G.
Gilmartin to describe a specific type of severe chronic shyness.
According to his definition, published in Shyness & Love:
Causes, Consequences, and Treatments (1987), love-shy people find
it difficult to be assertive in informal situations involving
potential romantic or sexual partners. For example, a heterosexual
love-shy male will have trouble initiating conversations with women
because of strong feelings of anxiety.
Dr. Gilmartin researched this phenomenon exclusively in
heterosexual men, concluding that (1987, p.1) love-shyness
"afflicts approximately 1.5 percent of all American males...[and]
will effectively prevent about 1.7 million [U.S.] males...from ever
marrying and from ever experiencing any form of intimate sexual
contact with women."
Gilmartin's definition
Gilmartin had seven criteria for each "love-shy man" he included in
his study:
* He is male.
* He is a man who very rarely goes out socially with women.
* He is a person without a past history of any emotionally close,
meaningful relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature with
any member of the opposite sex.
* He is a person who has suffered and is continuing to suffer
emotionally because of a lack of meaningful female companionship.
In short, he is a male who desperately wishes to have a
relationship with a woman, but does not have one because of his
shyness. In other words, he is not a man who consciously chooses
not to have romantic or intimate relationships; rather, he wants
such relationships but cannot establish them.
* He is a man who becomes extremely anxiety-ridden over so much as
the mere thought of asserting himself vis-à-vis a woman in a
casual, friendly way. This is the essence of "love-shyness".
* He is a man who is strictly heterosexual in his romantic and
erotic orientations. Again, he is a male who is in no way a
homosexual.
Gilmartin did not rule out the existence of female or homosexual
love-shy people, but he doubted they would feel the same negative
effects as heterosexual men, and suspected that the condition would
manifest very differently in them, largely due to the societal
roles that force heterosexual men into an "active" role in
initiating relationships that do not subject women or homosexual
men to the same pressures. Gilmartin explains, "[T]he very shy
young woman is no less likely to date and to marry than is the
self-confident woman, non-shy woman . . . . In essence, even very
shy women marry. Love-shy men cannot and do not marry irrespective
of how strong their desires might be . . . .
Other love-shy attributes
According to Gilmartin, many love-shy men show the following
patterns:
* often feel women are more privileged (have it easier) than
men
* place great, often disproportionate importance on physical beauty
(especially facial beauty)
* are not as likely to be interested in male friendships.
* births were physically difficult; required a c-section
* are in below-average physical shape as a group
* were usually quiet as infants, while non-love-shy men are rarely
so
* tend to be more interested in movies and music, and prefer
watching different types of movies from non-love-shy men
* are more interested in female oriented activities
* are less patriotic
* are more likely to be apolitical
* are less religious but largely spiritual
* develop interest in females at an earlier age than usual,
particularly in the third to fifth grade range
* often only want to have female children
* often have a hard time expressing their emotions
* often have tense, nervous, angry and/or two-faced mothers
* often have no sisters, and rarely have more than one
* often are very serious
* often had no adults to turn to for emotional support as children,
and continue to be that way as adults
* often felt they had little influence on family decisions as
children
* are easily upset
* have demanding parents who invade their privacy and are
overprotective
* often go through an excessive amount of psychological trauma, of
which love-shyness can be the aftermath; many of the above items
can be precursors of it
* were an only child
* hold their parents responsible because of some of the
aforementioned limitations and also hate them
However, these attributes are not limited to people who are love
shy; these patterns have also been diagnosed in other sorts of
medical conditions.
Woah i posted my 1000th post abt this! 
anyway,first time i heard of this "illness"