Michael Jackson diagnosis..."Love Shy"

[A_Powerful_Mind]

Wow...so I'm goofing off when I should be working and came across this and thought it was very interesting. Have you ever heard of the term 'Love Shyness'?

I haven't before today but it seems that MJ might have suffered from this most of his life.

Check out the details...

Love shyness is a phrase created 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 if not impossible 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.

Gilmartin had seven criteria for each "love-shy man" he included in his study:

* He is a virgin.
* He rarely goes out socially with women more than just friends.
* He has no history of any emotionally close, meaningful relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature with any member of the opposite sex.
* He has suffered and is continuing to suffer emotionally because of a lack of meaningful female companionship.
* He becomes extremely anxiety-ridden over so much as the mere thought of asserting himself vis-a-vis a woman in a casual, friendly way.
* He is strictly heterosexual in his romantic and erotic orientations.

Most of the love-shy men, but none of the non-shy men, reported never having any friends; not even acquaintances. The vast majority of love-shy men reported being bullied by children their own age due to their inhibitions and interests, while none of the non-shy men did, and love-shy men were less likely to fight back against bullies. Around half of the love-shy men reported being bullied or harassed as late as high school, while none of the non-shy men did. Even as adults, the love-shy men reported remaining friendless and abused by other people. This lack of acceptance by others caused the love-shy men to feel excessively lonely and depressed.

From the data Gilmartin uncovered about the love-shy's family life, they grew up in dysfunctional families. Most of the men reported that their parents and societal attitudes pressured them into being "real boys" because of the men's personalities as children. A huge portion of the men also suffered from physical abuse by their parents and often could not rely on them for emotional support. This also extended to their relatives and even as adults still could not rely on them for emotional support. It is possible that their parents' abuse and uncaring attitude to their son's emotions, desires, and interests were responsible for part of their social inhibitions.

Source (and to read more about it): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love-shyness

Of course nothing is 100% ...but damn. A lot of this stuff is spot on for Michael. I wonder if he ever knew about this?

 

[Bee]

Well...then I would call myself a love-shy woman, can find myself very much in it too. :blush:

Really interesting....although I think it's a bit odd to name it a sort of 'disease' like that.:scratch:
Seems to me there's not so much wrong with being love-shy. I wish more people were like that, Michael was the best example for how every man should treat love. It's hard to be that way in a world where love is being so 'abused' and gotten out of it's context...just hate today's view of love.

 

[A_Powerful_Mind]

I agree with much of what you said. I like shyness in people and prefer it to someone being "all out there" myself. But this love shyness is to an extreme I think.

I remember years ago I went with my dad to visit a friend of his. I might have been about 18 or 19 at the time. The lady had a 16 year old daughter. Very beautiful girl (saw her picture on the wall), she could have been a model. But she has got to be the shyest person I've ever personally seen in my life.

The minute we got to their house the girl vanished and where did her mother find her? UNDER her bed! This tall gorgeous looking 16 YEAR OLD girl was so shy to meet anyone new that she ran to her room and stayed under the bed for the whole time we were there (and no she's not mentally handicapped or anything like that).

Now that moves away from being charmingly shy to being very very 'special' for want of a better word. lol

 

[StaceyMJ]

I dunno...I don't like how people over analyse things and try to put a label on everything. He was who he was, and that's all there is to me. Plus, only he will really know how he felt about stuff like that. I just don't like how everyone tries to label him all the time. I'm not criticising this post, it's just how I feel.

 

[Bee]

I agree with much of what you said. I like shyness in people and prefer it to someone being "all out there" myself. But this love shyness is to an extreme I think.

I remember years ago I went with my dad to visit a friend of his. I might have been about 18 or 19 at the time. The lady had a 16 year old daughter. Very beautiful girl (saw her picture on the wall), she could have been a model. But she has got to be the shyest person I've ever personally seen in my life.

The minute we got to their house the girl vanished and where did her mother find her? UNDER her bed! This tall gorgeous looking 16 YEAR OLD girl was so shy to meet anyone new that she ran to her room and stayed under the bed for the whole time we were there (and no she's not mentally handicapped or anything like that).

Now that moves away from being charmingly shy to being very very 'special' for want of a better word. lol

Oh my...that's really sad. Poor girl.

But I think there's a great difference between being love-shy and being 'just' shy.
Love-shy as it says is being shy when it comes to love, relationships, getting to know persons deeper than usually, having to open yourself up...that kind of stuff.
Not so much for when you're just being friends or people you don't get that thingly feeling of....it's that love and trust-part which makes it hard. I can be really outgoing, Mike could be too, and you wouldn't say that person is being love-shy.
I think love-shy is also very misunderstood, cuz for instance that bullshit about Mike being a-sexual and stuff, that's so not true. Being love-shy doesn't mean you don't have or know those feelings, LOL! :lol: (I mean, hellooo..he was the sexiest man on the whole planet.)
But it just means it's hard for you to get there, to open up yourself and trust someone with your love..you're just too afraid to get hurt. Don't know for sure if that was the thing with Mike too ofcourse, but could be well possible since I can relate to it.
I can totally imagine that for Michael it would even be harder cuz it was already a fact that he had to look out for who to thrust...imagine being love-shy too.:mello:
Ofcourse it's not some sort of 'name giving' I'm mentioning here, it's just a feeling...some have it, some not.

 

[elmari]

Extremely interesting. I've never heard of this before. It certainly does sound a lot like Michael. But really, we only know what he let us know and we can only assume things. But I think it's a given that he is shy and that it was hard for him to find real romantic relationships because he was always suspicious of women's motives.

 

[PurpleParrot]

Very interesting, I also think it could fit for Michael, but since I don't know him personally, I can't be sure of anything, but from what we know about him, it could be.
But I also agree I'm not always comfortable putting a name or a disease to describe someone, but I know that, as fans, we want to understand him as much as we can and maybe things like that can help people *not fans* understand who he was *or judge him just more..depends*, even if it doesn't matter now that he's gone.

 

[A_Powerful_Mind]

I dunno...I don't like how people over analyse things and try to put a label on everything. He was who he was, and that's all there is to me. Plus, only he will really know how he felt about stuff like that. I just don't like how everyone tries to label him all the time. I'm not criticising this post, it's just how I feel.

Oh don't worry about it. I totally get what you're saying. I actually don't think he was love shy, he had relationships with women and got married...twice! lol I just found it interesting that they have something like that listed out there.

He does seem demonstrate a lot of the traits of a love shy person though.

Oh my...that's really sad. Poor girl.

But I think there's a great difference between being love-shy and being 'just' shy.
Love-shy as it says is being shy when it comes to love, relationships, getting to know persons deeper than usually, having to open yourself up...that kind of stuff.
Not so much for when you're just being friends or people you don't get that thingly feeling of....it's that love and trust-part which makes it hard. I can be really outgoing, Mike could be too, and you wouldn't say that person is being love-shy.
I think love-shy is also very misunderstood, cuz for instance that bullshit about Mike being a-sexual and stuff, that's so not true. Being love-shy doesn't mean you don't have or know those feelings, LOL! :lol: (I mean, hellooo..he was the sexiest man on the whole planet.)
But it just means it's hard for you to get there, to open up yourself and trust someone with your love..you're just too afraid to get hurt. Don't know for sure if that was the thing with Mike too ofcourse, but could be well possible since I can relate to it.
I can totally imagine that for Michael it would even be harder cuz it was already a fact that he had to look out for who to thrust...imagine being love-shy too.:mello:
Ofcourse it's not some sort of 'name giving' I'm mentioning here, it's just a feeling...some have it, some not.

I really did feel bad for her. I don't know if she's able to function in the real world even to this day.

And hell no Michael wasn't a-sexual. Even if you go by this love shy business, look at the last of the list of traits. It says love-shy men are "strictly hetero"...not "gay", not "bi", not "a"....but 100% get-ya-freak-on-if-you-can-break-the-ice HETERO.

 

[Jenny_MJforever]

wow this is really interesting! I think that its wrong to see being love-shy as an 'illness' but i think there is some truth in what is written about it. alot of it seem to be spot on about michael, like the dys-functional family. i think that michael had trust issues beacuse of his childhood, and that when it came to love, it only go harder. i know he was interested in girls and i think he has truly been deeply in love so i think he must have gotten over that trust treshold at some point. but that doesnt mean that he can be a little bit love-shy. i see nothing wrong with it, and everyone tackles love in a different way. but i agree with what most of you have written, i dont think michael was a-sexual, not for a second. i mean that man oozes sex when he's on stage! it was all in there, but maybe he choosed not to show us that when he was off stage. we really cant answer this question properly beacuse i think the only one who knows the answer is michael.

 

[trisha5500]

Possibly he was just an introvert. Alot of people confuse shyness with being introverted. I am introverted, but I don't consider myself shy.

 

[helena22]

Interesting...I think it can partly hold true. Esp. the part about abused people... But, mostly, I say, he was a shy/introverted person AND he was MJ, meaning he had a hard time being understood and accepted just as a person rather than the superstar. Whenever I think about this life-long pain he endured, it breaks my heart He had to ask this same question countless times: "This person really see who I am and like that or is caught up in the 'This-is-MJ-wow!' moment?" We know many stars who are not as big as MJ go thorugh this trust issue. Imagine what it must have been like for him...

The bottom line is, since he found it this hard to be understood as he was in almost every kind of relationship outside his family, his shyness in romantic relationship can also be looked at in the huge context of his life as Michael Jackson. Think about it, he was born shy, but growing up as a child star probably made him more shy and it stayed that way throughout his life.

As hard as it was for him to believe people, once he felt genuine care and love from someone, I think he wore his heart on his sleeve sharing the deepest secrets and did everything to please her. I heard this is one of the characteristics found in many shy people. Once they feel close to someone, they're not shy anymore at least when around that person. It can be a liberating experience where they reveal more of their soul. I've always thought he was a passionate guy around his woman in this way:wub: I wish he'd had more ladies after Lisa...