The author is a Millennial who has used online dating sites such as Tinder and OkCupid . She wrote this article because she wanted to provide insight into today's casual sexual culture from an insider's perspective.
Meet Imran. He's 25 years old and works as the manager of a local restaurant. He lives in a nice house with his parents and older brother and loves to play cricket both against friends and online, but he doesn't seem to be meeting people outside of work or cricket games. So what's holding him back?
Imran says, "I'm just too shy."
This is one of the most common reasons men give for not having asked someone out or dated more often: they really want to go for it, but they don't know how to overcome their shyness enough to take action. And the worst part is that due to this hesitance, many guys end up staying single much longer than they'd like to.
But what if we told you that shyness is a learned behavior? You learned it at some point by seeing or experiencing negative consequences of your actions, and over time you came to associate being shy with greater safety and reward. In other words, even though there are usually negative consequences to acting shy (such as getting passed up for opportunities), the positive consequences (feeling safer) outweigh them in your mind. So you end up thinking that "the rewards far exceed the risks" when in reality "the risks far exceed the rewards."
This is especially apparent when dating online. Dating sites like Match or eHarmony ask people to fill out questionnaires about their and dislikes before they can communicate with others. One of these questions is "Are you shy?" We've had clients tell us they didn't understand why this one was even included, because, as they said, "I don't consider myself shy!" In most cases, the reason they wonder about the question is because when they go on to view potential matches' profiles and see what people have put for this question, many say something like "Not really shy," "…a little," or a similar response.