Myths About Love-Shy Men

For more than a decade, love-shy men—men who struggle to find a romantic partner—have been emailing me and posting in my comment section about their woes. I have also worked with love-shy men in my life coaching practice. And I have also encountered many love-shy men in my personal life.

Since I have so much experience with this demographic, I find it frankly outrageous how cruel everyone is to them and how many false, negative stereotypes are allowed to go unchecked. Here is a list of common myths about love-shy men and why they are false.

Love-Shy Men Are Not Blackpillers

The term "incel” has two definitions:

• Anyone (specifically, any straight men) who has had severe trouble in finding sexual or romantic partners: for example, they might be in their early twenties and have never kissed anyone, or a virgin in their late twenties.

• People with a particular hateful ideology centered around the idea that only physical attractiveness matters in dating, women are evil and stupid, good-looking Chads are frolicking in pussy while most men are celibate, and we should bring back patriarchy.

Equivocating between these categories tars all older straight male virgins with the same brush: if you’ve had trouble finding a girlfriend, you must be a misogynist. This is both false and cruel to a group of people who are already suffering greatly.

I think we should all stop using the word “incel.” At this point, it’s irredeemable. People who have severe trouble finding sexual or romantic partners can be called “love-shy,” as I am doing in this post. Although I am focusing on love-shy straight men in this post because I have the most experience with love-shy straight men, people of any gender or orientation can be love-shy. People who believe that specific hateful ideology can be called “blackpillers.”

Terrible people are clearly overrepresented among people who can’t get a date. People mostly don’t want to date terrible people, and aren’t completely incapable of figuring out that someone is terrible. People who seethe with resentment, envy, and bitterness struggle to date, and then they go online to devise resentful, envious, bitter theories about how their dating failures are all the fault of hot people, who are universally evil. (You can find this with any gender and orientation combination.)

But most love-shy people aren’t terrible. Terrible people are very loud and post a lot. Many love-shy people tend to be, well, shy: they don’t talk very much. Those that do talk feel so ashamed of being love-shy that they often don’t mention it to anyone. They feel ugly or unwanted or broken. They feel like failures because this universal human experience has passed them by. You’d be surprised how many attractive, apparently socially functional men have never been kissed.

And love-shy men find resentment, envy, bitterness, and misogyny as repulsive as anyone else does. Spaces for love-shy people fill up with terrible people, and then the terrible people drive all the normal people away, and it looks like everyone who is love-shy is awful. But they really aren’t.

What’s more, blackpillers aren’t even always love-shy. I have had the displeasure of meeting multiple blackpillers with an above-average number of sexual and romantic partners. A relatively well-documented one is Brent Dill, a former rationalist who somehow managed to hold the belief that he was a low-status sexual failure universally despised by women, while having multiple 24/7 BDSM relationships with attractive women half his age. The fact that the beliefs of people like Brent—who is not by any stretch of the imagination love-shy—are held against ordinary love-shy men enrages me.

Love-Shy Men Are Usually Kind Of Confused About Dating

Because they have no experience in the dating world, love-shy men often wind up learning about dating from the media or online discourse. As such, they wind up with deeply confused ideas about dating.

Sometimes these ideas are sort of blackpill-adjacent: "women only like tall, handsome, masculine, charming men with big dicks who are mean to them, so no woman would ever be attracted to someone like me." However, the blackpill-adjacent love-shy man can be distinguished from the blackpiller proper by his lack of seething hatred and resentment. He might feel bad that women aren't attracted to him, but he won't feel angry at women for what they (purportedly) find attractive.

But it comes in a number of other flavors:

• "Everyone besides me is on Tinder or at nightclubs having casual, semi-anonymous sex with strangers. The average person has had sex with dozens if not hundreds of people. Women are regularly giving strange men blowjobs in the bathrooms of bars."

• "The most obnoxious feminists correctly describe the average woman's preferences. Women find men hitting on them to be terrifying and predatory. There are secret rules for when it is acceptable to hit on a woman, and if you can't divine them magically you are basically a rapist. Men are annoying and burdensome and women are better off when men don't impose their presence on them."

• "Disney is correct about how love works. Someday I will lock eyes with someone and just know that she's the one for me, and then everything will be very easy and we will frolic in a field of flowers and everyone will spontaneously sing a song about how great our love is."

All these beliefs have a grain of truth to them. Women do, in general, prefer tall, handsome, charming men, and a distressing number of them will at least tolerate assholes. Highly promiscuous people exist. Some ways of hitting on women will scare them, and inexperienced men might find some of the things that scare women surprising. Sometimes you meet someone and just click and everything is easy.

But more experienced daters know about the nuance. Awkward, short, ugly men can also get girlfriends; some women even prefer them. Most women do not like assholes. The average person is a monogamist or serial monogamist whose relationships last a pretty long time. Most basically reasonable ways of hitting on women will not frighten any normal woman; no one has a right to a life free of transient awkwardness. Many people in happy relationships took a while to figure out that this person was the one for them.

Because love-shy men are going off the Internet, which is full of deranged people, they are often mistaken about how dating works.

Love-Shy Men Are Often Physically Attractive

To be sure, difficulty dating sometimes comes from a man not having a very attractive face, or from him being a member of some desexualized demographic (Asian, short, fat, visibly physically disabled). In my experience, this accounts for a relatively small amount of loveshyness. Being short, fat, and Asian is not, like, ideal for your dating prospects, but many short, fat, Asian men do in fact manage to find a girlfriend and get married.

In general, love-shy men are no less hot than other men. Some are genuinely very handsome. I have known one love-shy man who had people talk behind his back about how he looks like a model.

I think physical attractiveness plays remarkably little role in whether straight men get dates. Straight women don't really ask men out, so even if a lot of them think you're super good-looking there's no way for this belief to translate into dates.

I want to say this explicitly because a lot of love-shy men conclude that they're not very hot and that's why they can’t find a girlfriend.

Also, your small dick doesn’t matter at all. Straight women don’t have Dick-o-Vision. By the time she finds out how big your dick is, she’s already decided to have sex with you.

Most Love-Shy Men Are Good Boyfriends For Some Woman

Let me give the obvious caveat. The vast majority of love-shy men are shy, anxious, and passive. You do get an occasional love-shy extrovert: typically, a man with a very male-dominated occupation and interests who rarely has a chance to meet women in day-to-day life. But most love-shy men rarely leave the house. Most of them are socially anxious or even socially phobic. Most of them are passive, at least romantically: if you date a love-shy man, you're going to be planning dates and initiating sex.

If you don't want a shy, anxious, passive boyfriend, then it's reasonable to rule out love-shy men.

Every other desirable trait is common among love-shy men. Physical appearance, as I said. But also kindness, intelligence, sense of humor, being a good listener, wealth, ambition, emotional resilience, any kind of shared interests you can name, plans for children, plans not to have children, cooking skill, and the authentic desire to wash the dishes.

As the famed Eudai said, the odds are good and the goods are great.

Let me be a little cynical here. There's a market inefficiency where other women are prioritizing "proactively hits on me" far higher than is reasonable given their actual relationship preferences. If you're willing to date a love-shy man, you can pick up a highly desirable man at bargain-basement prices. Dating a love-shy man is the most reliable method I know for a straight woman to date someone richer, prettier, and cooler than her class, appearance and level of coolness would generally allow.

And they're so grateful and eager-to-please! You have not known how nice a man can be to you until you've dated a love-shy man who is pretty sure you are an act of divine intervention from God Himself to save him from celibacy and loneliness. Not in a doormat or people pleaser way, to be clear; they still set boundaries and express their preferences. But many love-shy men have literal decades of repressed desire to be romantic and loving, and you can take advantage of this.

Love-Shy Men Don't Have Persistently Low Self-Esteem That Makes Dating Them Stressful

I understand why this sentiment is widely believed by people without experience with love-shy men, because it makes sense. If a man believes that no woman would ever be romantically interested in him, obviously he's going to continue to believe that well into the relationship. You should expect him to require constant reassurance that you're not going to leave him, to be jealous about other men, and to generally be a people-pleasing doormat.

In reality, however, most love-shy men do not have a distorted belief that women aren't interested in them. They have a completely rational, albeit self-fulfilling, belief that women aren't interested in them.

Sometimes people believe that no one would ever fall in love with them because they're depressed, and you can say "what about your past six girlfriends?" as much as you want without it changing their opinion one bit. On the whole, this is not love-shy men's problem. Love-shy men believe that women aren't attracted to them because they've never experienced a woman being attracted to them. If something has never happened to you in the past decade, it's completely reasonable to believe that it will continue to not happen to you. If you see everyone else around you falling in love, and no one has ever fallen in love with you, it is rational to believe that you’ll never experience requited love.

Now, this is a self-perpetuating cycle, as I said in my last post on the subject. A man who believes that no woman could possibly be attracted to him is going to miss the subtle ways that women express interest (or, for that matter, the less subtle ways). He will give up quickly on dating apps. He is likely to believe that his romantic interest is unwanted, and therefore expressing it is inherently sexual harassment.

But, because his belief is rational, a love-shy man is far more likely to be able to update it in response to new evidence, and so conclude that his girlfriend is interested in him.

I am polyamorous and I have dated a lot of love-shy men. You would think that this would create a whirlpool of monstrous jealousy. But I've never had a problem. The love-shy men I’ve dated have literally never required an unusual amount of reassurance, created drama, tried to get me to break up with my other partners, refused to set boundaries for fear of me leaving them, or anything like that. Some of this is no doubt some kind of insane selection effect on my dating pool but my experience is at least an existence proof of many love-shy men who are not troublesome to date in this fashion.

Some people are very insecure and clingy in relationships. But in my experience this is usually a personality trait, not a response to circumstances. You may yourself observe many romantically successful people who feel very insecure in their relationships. No matter how many relationships they have or how long their relationship lasts, they'll be clingy and insecure because of something something genetics or something something parenting. Love-shy men are as likely as anyone else to be affected in this way by something something genetics and something something parenting. But their love-shyness doesn't actually make them clingier.

To be sure, love-shy men might continue to believe that other women aren't interested in them, and that you are some kind of bizarre fluke. But that doesn't mean they're insecure about you. And the belief that you are a bizarre fluke doesn’t matter much for your dating experience.

Love-Shy Men Don't Have Unreasonable Standards

I see this myth in both directions. On the one hand, a lot of people believe that love-shy men are desperate and would date literally any woman with a pulse (and any man who has a standard higher than "exists" isn't "really love-shy"). On the other hand, a lot of people believe that love-shy men have many options and are rejecting hundreds of women for not being twenty-two-year-old 20-BMI virgins who love anal and have breasts the size of their heads.

In reality, love-shy men have dating standards that are basically... normal? They want to date a woman they're sexually attracted to, but they aren't holding out for Sydney Sweeney. They want to date a woman who has her shit together, but they understand that everyone has flaws and aren't expecting perfect self-actualization and emotional maturity. Most of all, they want to date a woman they enjoy talking to, who shares their values and interests, and who likes them.

It's very stupid to say that someone isn't love-shy if there exists some person they wouldn't date. Healthy people don't want to date literally anyone who is interested in them.¹ Of course, at some point your problem becomes pickiness and not love-shyness. But you can be validly lonely even if theoretically you might reject someone.

Love-shyness is mostly a matching problem. Very, very few love-shy men actually have no women who might be interested in them. Most love-shy men just don't know how to meet interested women and form relationships with them. The fact that a love-shy man might reject some of the women who are theoretically interested in him is neither here nor there regarding the central problem.

Love-Shy Men Sometimes Have Dating Experience

Sometimes, being asked out creates a virtuous cycle where a love-shy man realizes that women can be attracted to him, learns to flirt, discovers that multiple women are interested in him, and gets married, becomes mind-bogglingly slutty, or both.

Unfortunately, sometimes a love-shy man thinks of the woman who was interested in him as an isolated fluke. When she breaks up with him, he returns to his love-shy ways. Many older love-shy men have a few short relationships under their belt. Many married men who used to be love-shy would become love-shy again if their wives divorced them.

I don't think a love-shy man's girlfriend can ensure a good outcome for him, except tautologically by continuing to date him. Ultimately, each love-shy man has to choose for himself to learn how to flirt.

You Can't Fix A Man's Love-Shyness With Your Vagina

At some point, every slutty nerdy woman says to herself, "I like sex. This man is very sad because he isn't having any sex. Surely this is a fixable problem."

Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Usually, the men who are noisiest about their love-shyness are blackpillers in addition to/instead of being love-shy, and sex does absolutely nothing about being a blackpiller. But even if you have a purely love-shy man, having a one-night stand with him won't fix anything.

No man's problem is just not having sex. If it was, he could hire a sex worker. However, even love-shy men who see sex workers continue to be depressed and lonely.

Love-shy men need romance, validation of their attractiveness, cuddles, love, someone who cares about them and worries about them and misses them when they're gone, and someone to build a life with. Unfortunately, you can only give a man that if you actually like him and want to have a relationship with him. Altruistic dating doesn't work (and would probably just give the poor man a complex).

I don't mean to say that you shouldn't have situationships with love-shy men. But you shouldn't have sex with love-shy men altruistically. My experience is that this leaves them worse off, because they feel sad and rejected and (if you told them it was altruistic) they feel so unattractive that women will only have sex with them out of pity. You should only have sex with them if you actually think they're cute.

You should also make sure you have the emotional bandwidth to do right by them. Love-shy men will often say "yes" to a one-night stand (because they're desperate) but are very rarely emotionally prepared to deal with one. I would recommend not having sex with a love-shy man unless you are prepared for at least a few months of a reasonably emotionally intimate relationship where you spend time with him regularly and express affection and appreciation to him.

You should also have reasonable expectations about how much change you can make in his life. It’s true that romantic fulfillment can make people happier and even lift depression. But if someone’s life is generally a mess, you can only fix the parts of the problem related to romantic loneliness; it’s unlikely your love will solve his mental illness, chronic unemployment, or compulsive behavior. And a love-shy man’s romantic fate is ultimately in his own hands. As I said in a previous point, you can’t make someone decide that your existence is evidence lots of women are attracted to them.

1. Even the worst blackpillers admit this: they continue to identify as involuntarily celibate, even though Grindr exists.