how did you find out about eye-contact?

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I naturally don't make eye contact, I became aware that this was important when my girlfriend explained that people look at each other for several reasons. One, to show you are listening. Two, to be polite. Three, because you can get information about what a person is feeling by looking into their eyes.

Since I don't naturally know how to make eye contact, I mirror the person I am talking to. If they look into my eyes and hold a gaze the entire time, so do I. If they look,then look away and then look back, I do the same. If they glance quickly, same thing. However, sometimes I forget to do this. I was talking to a girl last month, and in the middle of our conversation she said "I wish you would look at me" Ooops!

This I have found out with myself too. Sometimes I try to look intentionelly into someones eyes and I cannot listen anymore at all and looking at someones lips helps me "reading" what they say.

I like to stare into peoples souls while locking my eyes on they're eyes, I don't blink and I just stare while talking. It's fun to do because it creeps them out.

I only learned about eye contact when I was diagnosed and then when I read about it on WP. I thought that my wandering eyes, up/down/side looking eyes, and soul-sucking stare had been completely normal forms of hooman-to-hooman eye contact before. That is how I thought about eberrything before I was diagnosed, that eberrything that I did was 100% normal, healthy, and well-adjusted, and that eberryone who behaved differently from me was insane. People had told me about my weird eye contact years before diagnosis and my weird facial expressions too, but I never thought anything of it at the times.

I really love your cat.

I feel it the same way (except I didn't thought of people being insane, I just never understood) and now after being conscious about it I actually feel worse than before, less "me". Somehow I hope, that I start forgetting about it all again.
btbnnyr, I like your special words in your posts.

Me too!

I think my cat makes furrrty goood eye contact. Will take pointers from catatar next time go out in public and there is hot guy at fast food restaurant to call my number to gimme feeds.



I understand one and two, but when I stare into someone's eyes, I see their iris specks, pupils, iris rings, blood vessels, whites of eyes of various hints of tints, eye corner flesh folds, eye boogers, eyelid creases, eyelashes, curls of eyelashes, clearance between eyelashses and eyebrows, anything but what the victim is feeling. My default mental state seems to be "Visual Inspection", so physical features dominate my view of the world. Further meanings, like social, oops, I furrrgots to think about them at all, doh. Anyone else experience this instead of the social processing that NTs have?

I started realizing a couple years ago that I had to force myself to do anything more than glance at someone's eyes during a conversation. It's not so bad with friends, I can hold eye contact without getting too uncomfortable. But coworkers and strangers, it's still hard to look them in the eye more than a second or two. I'm working on it though.

I see all of this looking into the eyes of my cats and I get really dissolved into it. It is so beautiful, this green and orange eyes!
With people I don't look somehow, I avoid.
Because then I cannot "think" anymore, meaning "following" what they say.
Social meanings I learn by telling people me what I do wrong (and since DX by reading about it).
But I only learn the theory and forget about it or I internalize it in a way, that it becomes in a way an "intrusive thought", which makes me act wrong again, because by this intrusive thought about how do look or act right I get blocked and then I get told, that I should "ease up" and be "spontaneous".
So I rather forget.

My speech thearpist when I was in first grade was the first to notice. She made me keep my nose pointed at hers. Then she told me to stare at foreheads and mouths and no one will notice.

3 things made me aware of my lack of eye contact, way before thinking about aspergers.

1-I couldn't tell people's eye colour (still can't)
2-Some co-workers started to play with that, staring at me when very close to me (I usually reply by forcing eye contact to the point they get uncomfortable with it, they gave up)
3-It happens very often that people look behind them when I talk to them face to face (which I avoid as much as possible)

There is also a weird thing that happens regarding eye contact, I'm not sure why : when someone is giving an explanation to a group (including me), I am usually the one he/she looks at most of the time. It's like I can only stare at people, giving them the impression that I'm very interested in what they say (when I'm at a fair distance from them, otherwise, see my 3rd point ... !).

Teachers and whatnot telling me to look at them. I usually didn't comply.

Such a useless and trivial thing to point out/request of someone.

Sigh. I'm trying to do better eye contact now. Before that I used to look only at a persons mouth. Now I try looking them in the spot between their eyebrows. Seems to work fine for me, no one really complains anymore.

Similar, but at about half that age... and then regularly the "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" And regularly being accused of being dishonest/lying/hiding/untrustworthy if I couldn't look at his eyes when talking to him.
So, I learned that is what you must do. But I get so distracted that I end up where I can't hear or understand what's being said. I sometimes try looking into both eyes at the same time which give me wobbly starring eyes. And I invariably am concentrating on it so much that I forget to blink and end up with dry eyeballs... and when I notice that my eyeballs have dried out I also often realise that I've frozen into a statue or a rabbit in headlights... And then my eyes start to water so I open my eyes wider so I can see past the tears. If I blinked then I'd have tears fall out of my eyes. And then I can only see the person's eyes in negative
... And I certainly haven't a clue what they are saying by this stage.
I've tried looking at the spot between peoples' eyes, or at just one eye, but that just gets me noticing the skin pores or iris spots or broken veins etc and I probably just look squint.
l read somewhere that you should look at one eye and then the other and just keep doing that... But I suspect that looks shiftier than just not looking at them at all

The many angry yells of "LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!!" may have done it.

It's ironic, looking back at it, because when I was forced to make eye contact, I understood much less of what they were saying--the opposite of what they intended.