"Oh, Leave Him Alone; He's Still Got Plenty of
Time!"

     The early blooming rosebud does not have "lots of time" anymore
than the late blooming one has "lots of time". Left to fester unattended,
love-shyness can quickly and easily become a permanent way of life.
Some of the angriest and most bitter comments expressed in the hundreds
of interviews I conducted for this book pertained to well-meaning but
misguided parents and relatives who had reacted to a respondent's lack
of female friends with the statement: "Oh, don't worry! Leave him alone!
He's still got plenty of time!"
     Simply put, love-shy males at any age do not want to be "left
alone". They do not want their love-shyness problems to go ignored
and misinterpreted. They want to get out into the flow of life as nature
had intended for them. The following interview quotation poignantly
reflects the rage which many love-shy men feel towards their parents'
noncaring attitudes.

     "I can remember lots of times my mother would have her friends
     over and someone would bring up the fact that I hadn't started dating
     yet. I was always delighted whenever this happened because I thought
     someone might finally do something for me. But my delight always
     quickly faded to depression because there was always someone there
     who would say 'oh, leave him alone; he's still got plenty of time'.
     And my stupid parents would go long with that bullshit reasoning.
     I didn't want to be left alone, and I would always fervently pray
     that someone would do something for me that would somehow get
     me introduced to somebody. But that never happened. Today my
     parents never invite their friends over when I'm around. But for a
     really long time all I ever heard was this bullshit that I should be
     left alone because I've got plenty of time!" (39-year old love-shy
     man.)

     One very important point about time is that it has a way of passing
very rapidly. Time must be used. And a key reason why so many of
the love-shy men I interviewed were so bitter is that no one had ever
cared enough to help them use their time productively. No one had ever
helped them use it in a way that might have stood a chance of leading
to a satisfactory remedy for their love-shyness problems.
     Many people operate on the basis of the untenable assumption
that no young man wants his parents to arrange any introductions with
girls on his behalf. My own work suggests that most love-shy men are
quite nervous and tense about anyone arranging introduction for them
because of a fear of not knowing what to say or of how to keep an
interesting conversation going. And this nervousness is often miscon-
strued as suggesting an antithetical attitude towards arranged
introductions.
     Most young people do not object to tactfully arranged introductions
by caring parents, relatives, teachers and friends. And this is especially
tree with regard to the love-shy. Such introductions serve to expand a
person's field of eligibles. An arranged introduction is NOT a betrothal!
The young person who is introduced to someone still has plenty of free
choice as to whom he will select as dating partners and as an eventual
marriage partner.