Eye contact and affection...

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I can make eye contact with my dog, not so sure with humans.

It's just something that makes me feel vulnerable.

Thanks for sharing everyone. I was interested to know, as my son with autism (4) is very engaging, smiles alot, is affectionate, and is able to maintain good eye contact for good periods of time... So we are very lucky. I guess i was under the assumption in a way that it wasnt very common?

Often I take off my glasses to make things blurry when in a group setting. Kinda like a deaf person taking out a hearing aid to quiet things down I think.

I don't have that much of a 'problem' with eye contact per se, as in I don't think it makes me particularly uncomfortable (other than that it forces me to be aware of the fact that somebody is looking at me and, more often than not, giving me funny faces to indicate that I'm doing/not doing something that makes them uncomfortable, which, depending on the person, I would imagine would make *anybody* uncomfortable.)... But I don't automatically fixate on peoples' eyes like NTs seem to. To me, looking at somebody's eyes is pretty much just equivalent to looking anywhere else; nothing really intrinsic or special about it.

It probably has something to do with being the type of Aspie who doesn't automatically count anybody he meets as being an actual person until they prove it to him. My intrinsic respect for humanity as a whole is pretty low.

On that note, it would also be interesting to note that I, like some others here, like most other animals and have much less of a problem thinking of them as people, and as such feeling affection and being good with eye contact than I do with humans.

I like to be affectionate with someone I'm interested in, but I still suck at eye contact. Random hugs and touches from just anyone else bothers me.

i only looks at my kids and partner in the eye, everyone else i look anywhere but at them
unerves me, affection was hard to start with, but i can now
but i still sometimes cant do it, dont like feeling trapped

so, i guess with tthe ones that count i can do it, sometimes
otherwise no way
dont like people
i like the net coz it means no contact in anyway except 4 words
safe

I don't like eye contact and I'm not the most affectionate (but I can be from time to time). Except for with 1 of my friends, and I really enjoy it.

I have trouble with eye contact while I'm actually talking to someone. It's not so much that it makes me uncomfortable, it's just distracting, and I can't focus on what I want to say. I have to look away in order to find the words. I think it might depend on the subject matter, but if it involves having to imagine or consider a problem, then I have to look off to the left in order to find the words to say. I try to remember to look at their eyes as soon as I'm almost done with my sentence, though, when I don't need to be finding words anymore. My mother is exactly the same way. Both of us are kind of close to being AS, but probably not enough to go seeking a diagnosis.

I'm not particularly affectionate. I can feel very deep love for someone, but I don't express it much. I love my husband dearly, but I don't like looking in his eyes for a long time. He had lovely eyes, and I'm comfortable with him, but the long gazes bug me. That is, unless we are both being very playful, like putting our noses together and looking into each other's eyes like that. Then it's kind of fun, if I'm in that kind of mood.

One problem I've always had is that I'm often not sure how to know when a show of affection might be considered sexual or not. I have misread cues before, and accidentally sent the wrong ones. If I have no sexual interest towards the person, but I feel like I want to express affection, I end up feeling uneasy, because I'm afraid of sending the wrong signal. I also found that if you come out and say, "Could you please tell me if you meant that in a sexual way or a non-sexual way, because I can't always tell, and I don't want to misunderstand you, " it makes people so uneasy that they go away and you never see them again.

Years ago, I took a class where one of our first in-class exercises was to pair up with a same-sex classmate and look into each other's eyes for a full minute. Then we all discussed how that made us feel. It was something about personal boundaries. I had no trouble looking into my partner's eyes at all, because it was a class experiment. That made it okay. I still remember her face, 15 years later. She had trouble, though, and kept giggling. There was a young married couple in the class, and they were allowed to pair up together. They were not able to look into each other's eyes at all.