Couples Counseling for the Shy perhaps?
It’s amazing how much research is done in the field of couples counseling. I’ve just come across an in-depth study on how shyness influences marital satisfaction. The study is by Levi Baker and James K. McNulty, and is called ”Shyness and Marriage: Does Shyness Shape Even Established Relationships?” It’s published by SAGE.
I love reading academic studies like this, because they have to start by defining “What is shyness”, and there is of course a psychological test which has been developed to measure this. There are also well established scales used in marriage counseling to assess how happy you are in your marriage. The researchers were able to apply these “instruments” to a few hundred couples, run some sophisticated statistical analysis, and add another insight.
If I sound just a touch cautious about this, it’s just because during my short time as a blogger in the field of couples therapy I’ve come across a few contradictory reports on how living together before you marry affects your long-term success. You can visit my post on “Is Marriage Bad for Couples Therapists?” for more on that. There are so many factors in this field, that you can never be sure what got left out, and that another paper won’t pop up with exactly the opposite conclusions, just as beautifully researched.
The main result from Baker and McNulty was that if you are shy, you will find it just as easy to find a partner as everyone else. But you won’t be as happy. There’s a poignant twist. Your partner maybe blissfully happy with the relationship, partly because you may be too shy to tell them that they need to shape up and meet your needs more.
