Many people have to overcome their shyness before starting to date. If you are a very shy person, you should be encouraged by the fact that a lot of persons like you have learned to have active dating lifestyles.

However, shy guys could not get themselves to make the first move or ask someone out on a date without considerable struggle or pain. This could block your chance of introducing yourself to someone you find very interesting.

There is a double-edge sword for shy people. Most times they belong to their own group of friends or family that provides them support. These groups know the person, understand the shyness and accept him or her, and often enjoy their company. This sense of refuge in your own group could work against the shy person and prevent them from venturing out to meet new people with different backgrounds and personalities. So what could a lonely shy person do besides curl up in front of the TV with the remote control?

The first thing to do is to recognize that being shy prevents you from dating and that you should overcome it. Sit yourself down and relax and start thinking of dating someone you like. Focus on the feelings, fears and apprehensions that develop as you start working yourself through the imaginary date. It is very helpful to have a clear understanding of your thoughts and feelings so you can confront the things that cause that paralyzing dread, that overwhelming shyness that could stop you dead on your tracks.

If you have great difficulty in isolating your thoughts, it would be a good idea to consider visiting a therapist for a few sessions of personal counseling. Only a few could be needed because the idea is for the therapist to help you identify the real causes of your shyness for dating. Once the process helps in isolating these causes, you would need little help in confronting or overcoming them. The counselor would also help build your confidence in facing these issues.

With or without the counselor, you could try to enact an imaginary date in your mind. Moving in precise steps: from meeting a woman, talking to her, calling her on the phone to set a date, choosing a place, picking her up, and so on. In your mind, walk yourself through each stage in as much detail as you can. Try to begin in a way or situation that is most comfortable with you. Then, at each stage, confront any tension or panic that you feel could prevent you from going to the next step. Repeat the “date” through each imaginary step until you can picture the entire dating sequence without feeling stressed out or petrified with shyness.

Once you understand your shyness and have a little idea of how to face it, it is time to go out with another person for a “test date”. Every person has persons from the opposite sex that is close to them. For guys, they would be a sister, a cousin, a good friend, colleague, or teammate. Make sure that the person is someone close to you and there is no chance of getting intimate with them. This friend should understand your dating (or more appropriately, “non-dating”) situation and be prepared to help you through some practice night outs or dates.

Depending on how close you are to this practice date partner, you can go through all the motions of a real date. Contact or call them and do all the steps we identified earlier in your “imaginary date” in these practice nights out. Act out a role as if the other person is a potential romantic date.

As practice runs go, a shy person is bound to mess up some of the steps. So it’s good to have a good friend playing practice date. Both of them can laugh off all the bloopers during the exercise, and may even make up good funny stories in the future. More importantly, they could talk about what went wrong, or when some sudden shyness acted up again. Remember, shyness not only affects how you relate to your date, but probably all people that the person will meet while he or she is with the said date (like the bartender, waiter, other guests in the restaurant, etc…). Having test dates will help call out potential “shy” traps.

Often, shyness comes from having feelings of low self-esteem. If it is something like being self-conscious of one’s weight or clothes, it could be remedied. Going on a fitness training program or changing your wardrobe will solve those two problems. And you should know that regular exercise gives you a slight feeling of exhilaration. So although you may not have lost all the extra pounds, you feel healthier, fitter and more comfortable around other people. The important thing is you did something to remove that feeling of inadequacy and made yourself feel better about yourself.

The pick-up lines, choice of date places, and seduction come a little later. What a shy guy should remember is overcoming the hurdle of meeting other people for a date is the key to starting off an active dating life.