Another Eye Contact Question

Post Reply New Topic

For those who do sometimes make eye contact for more than a second or so at a time~

(Which evidently I haven't been doing lately b/c it felt very strange when I had to do it yesterday....)

Is it just me, or did you ever notice that you can't really look into both of someone's eye's simultaneously - you can only really look into each other's "eye"? I guess I haven't gazed into eyes much for a while, but yesterday I was sitting really close to someone for hours (she really talked a LOT about her family, her health, cars, guys, her coworkers, and other subjects in between short spurts of talking about the subject supposedly at hand - she mentioned that she brings work home to do in front of the TV...)

Before that, I met my neighbor for the first time outside the house today & it would have been rude not to look... although, I felt like running into the woods (that was b/c of me, nothing to do with him). It was easier though, like under a minute, vs. three hours with the other person. Plus my neighbor has unusual-colored eyes (& it's a pretty color) so I might have stared at his eyes even if I wasn't talking to him.... of course, that's not really polite..... I used to wear dark glasses whenever I was out & about, maybe I should get them again. But I probably would not have been wearing them yet when I was talking to that guy in the driveway, anyway. In his case he lives next door, so he will know pretty soon the wide spectrum of what I look like day to day. So that was his advance warning.

What are you supposed to do when you look for a long time into someone's one eye, do you shift eyes at some interval or something? Is that how you get a break from that intensity of staring (it feels like staring to me anyway)? I'm not remembering. I think I got messed up when I had a coworker whose eyes went different directions, and later she told me she had only one regular eye & the other is a prosthetic, then I could never remember which was which. (Lately it doesn't take much to mess me up - it's all in the timing though.....)

I did used to know this, (or maybe I just didn't know that I was never looking at people how they expected) but lately I have been spending a lot of time alone, & it isn't coming "naturally" at all, it just feels awkward. I wonder why my mother never explained this skill to me. Maybe she did, non-verbally. Or, because most people know how to look in each other's eyes instinctively w/o being told, it wouldn't occur to them to explain the technique to anyone (instead they just take it the wrong way, and they probably think I don't like them especially because I have fairly severe prosopagnosia so I probably have no idea who half the people are... I didn't recognize my son's current teacher, the other day. And this was at the school - so completely in context.)

I always look into the right eye. Never the left. I noticed that when I was talking to a friend who is slightly cross-eyed and was wondering "why does he always look away?"..

It is impossible to look at both eyes like I look at one eye unless you are a chameleon.