The Field of Roses Metaphor

      In all of nature the young of virtually no species mature at exactly
the same time. Humans are no exception to this. In this regard humans
can be compared to a field of roses. Under proper care each rosebud
will eventually open up and develop into a beautiful flower. The majority
of the rosebuds will commence opening up within a few days of one
another. However, some will begin unfolding into beautiful flowers
significantly earlier than the rest. And still others will continue on in
the rosebud stage long after the rest of the flowers have come into full
bloom.
     Any horticulturist would agree that prodding the slow buds to
open before they are ready will result in serious injury and possibly
death. In addition, the resultant flowers will prove much less attractive
than those which had been permitted to open and blossom at their own
pace. And so it is with the early buds. Any effort that might be made
to slow them down and prevent them from blossoming before the rest
will result in lifelong damage and possibly even in death.
     The paradox here is that love-shy men appear to have been early
bloomers, and not "late" ones as most people are inclined to think. A
genuine "late bloomer" is a person who truly does not become romant-
ically interested in the opposite sex until he is perhaps long out of high
school and into his sophomore or junior year of college. Many perfectly
healthy heterosexual men are "late bloomers" of this sort. Love-shy men,
however, are not! Love-shy men are early bloomers who are tempera-
mentally inhibited, and whose well-intentioned but misguided "gar-
deners" (parents and teachers) tried to force them to stop blooming and
to attune themselves to the internal timetables of others instead of to
their own internal God-given timetables. Most love-shy men seem to
have had parents who either thought love-shyness was "good" or who
ignored it and failed to properly read and interpret the lovelorn behavior
of their sons.