The "Felt Deprivation" Concept

     I don't believe that anyone can be correctly classified as "love-shy" unless he truly
craves emotionally meaningful female companionship.  Deprivation is never enough
by itself to cause mental anguish, pain and suffering.  A person cannot feel deprived
of something unless and until he actually wants the thing of which he is being
deprived.  A person who truly feels deprived of something he very dearly wants will
necessarily suffer a very great deal (1) from anxiety, and (2) from very painful and highly
distracting feelings of preoccupation.  He will not be able to concentrate effectively on
his work or, if he is a student, on his studies.  He will very likely be an underachiever
because his intensely painful feelings of deprivation impede him from directing his
energies towards constructive ends.
     If the deprived person is accorded an opportunity to work towards the thing he so
strongly desires, his energy-wasting preoccupation and distractability will rapidly
dissipate.  However, the love-shy man cannot do this.  The love-shy man is prevented
from working towards his female companionship goal by his intractable shyness and
inhibition, and by the inordinately strong fears of interpersonal anxiety that accompany
love-shyness and which are intrinsic to it.  Simply put, the mere thought of asserting
himself in a friendly way vis-a-vis a girl whom he finds attractive fills a love-shy man
with overwhelmingly painful (and forbidding) anxiety feelings.  Hence, he can only
continue to feel preoccupied and painfully distracted.
     Criterion #4 for determining who is and who is not love-shy is of crucial and
indispensable importance to the research upon which this book is based.  Without
such a criterion there would be inevitably be a good many men getting into the sample
who are not personally bothered very much by the fact that they do not have any loving
female companionship in their lives.  It is important to realize that human beings differ
in the extent of their needs for female companionship and for love.  A person who is
deprived but who does not feel deprived cannot be a problem either to himself or to
his society or community.  In short, deprivation on an objective level is not the thing to
look for in understanding love-shyness and the many problems to which it gives rise.  
It is how a person feels on a subjective level that really matters.  And this is why I made
sure that no one got into the love-shy samples unless they very deeply and strongly
desired the emotionally meaningful companionship of a woman.
     In sum, the problem of love-shyness can be deemed to exist in a man only when that
man: (1) deeply and sincerely craves the love and companionship of a woman, and
(2) when the mere thought of asserting himself in a friendly way vis-a-vis a woman he
finds attractive fills him with extremely painful anxiety feelings.  Of course, inasmuch as
this study was to concern itself strictly with love-shyness among heterosexual males, 
criteria had to be established which would accurately differentiate heterosexual
research respondents from those who might be homosexual.  It is to this important 
matter that we now turn.