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-Ã -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"