Why don't people with aspergers look people in the eye?

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Eye contact is more intimate than kissing.

no it is not.

My boss has been encouraging me to try and make eye contact. I am able to do it for short periods of time but it is taxing with respect to using up valuable cognitive real estate. My mind is forced to focus on the effort of eye contact instead of the information the person is trying to give. I also get more easily distracted. It just doesn't feel natural. It took a whole lot of effort pulling off eye contact with the reps from the states and my parts director and my boss during our lunch in May. I just wasn't able to keep up mentally with respect to processing what was said and articulate what I was going to say. Others jumped in before I had a chance to say anything much.

as a child, it was drilled into me by my military father, to look people in the eye.

If your boss knows you're an Aspie, have you tried explaining to him that by making eye contact you're causing yourself real mental exhaustion/fatigue and it could end up affecting your job performance and efficiency?

They hate it when that happens.

They don't know. Most of the time I pass as normal and don't have to worry about it most of the time since I work alone in the warehouse most of he time. The situation I described was one of those rare occasions due to a new bar coding system being implemented. My overall job performance review was good and I got a raise. It's not very often I have to converse for long periods of time since most of the time it's just 5 to ten seconds of verbal shipping instructions which they put on the invoice anyway so I could focus on the eye contact and read the instructions later. The aspieness thing for me has always been a don't ask don't tell thing due to the stigma.

I generally feel alone in the Universe, and separate from everyone else, kind of like they are all a form of virtual reality, and not real. This doesn't apply to my kids because they are a part of me.

When I see some looking at my eyes, I get unnerved. It is like there is

someone else

in my Universe. Like an unknown presence, real, not virtual, and I don't know why they are there. I guess it kind of invades my schema about what reality is.

I have learned to maintain some eye contact, but I don't like it, and tend to do it in glances. When I am upset, I barely look at anyone at all.
But sometimes when I am angry and tend to glare straight into peoples eyes for prolonged periods of time, and I see them feel uncomfortable and look away. At these times, I feel like I could put a sword straight through their eye without thinking twice.

Good thing I don't usually carry one.

'cause it's how soul eaters get your soul.

Oh yes it is.

This. Plus, for whatever reason, it makes me uncomfortable.

if somebody i'm speaking with never even looks in my direction, I have no idea if i'm "reaching" him/her or not.

i recenty found this article. it has some explination about why exactly eye-contact feels uncomfortable, there really is some mechanism behind it.

Normally I don't have an issue with "glancing" eye contact, but in a doctor's office for a routine exam where they are checking off their "avoids eye contact" box I can't resist avoiding giving them any just on principle.

Primarily, I avoid eye contact because I don't want to accidentally initiate a conversation. Either I will feel like I have to say something or they will. If I don't look at them I'm hoping they'll go away.

I was forced by my parents and a couple teachers to make eye contact when I was young but as it doesn't come natural I don't know instinctively how long to make eye contact and looking too long might mean something I don't intend. I think NTs think that means you either want to murder them or have sex with them. I don't want to be accidentally sending either of those messages.

no it is not.

For me it is.