Eyes

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well..it's a feeling not anything describable outside of metaphor.

Have you never seen fear in anyone's eyes. An animal even?

Ha ha ha, that was great!




Again, I am very sorry if I offended the OP. I see not many people share my opinion, and I'm sorry if I worded it in a way that came across as rude, but it's still my opinion. I find erotic fiction hilarious if I'm in a silly mood, but of course I can get turned on by it just like anyone else if it's well-written.

Somebody, please: write some more!



Before this thread gets hi-jacked too much maybe we should start a spin-off thread somewhere else..

Molly, I kind of understand where you are coming from, I used to feel the same way about romance novels, I turned my nose down on them - but people really love them as much as I love the kinds of books I read. But you really didn't insult me, people just have different views about things, that's why I didn't want to get into a whole big thing with you over it.

Being serious now...

I do know this, Leafplant, but very few other people do.

There you go again talking about "people in the UK." This is a forum for autistic people. We are known for having issues with eye contact, remember? Nationality is not really relevant to this topic.

The fact is that I find eye contact to be a very intimate experience. When I look into someone's eyes and they're looking back at me, I feel as though they're exposing themselves. Naked. It's shocking. If they are a woman, it's like as though they were lifting their bra and flashing their breasts at me, and if they were a man, it's like as though they were flashing their genitals. But it's more than that. It's even more intimate. It's like...seeing the place where they are.

Hence, like many other autistic people, I tend to avoid prolonged eye contact with strangers. I prefer to reserve it for a romantic relationship, because I find eye-looking to be the most intimate thing you can do. More so than sex. I do indeed talk with my eyes. For many years I tried doing so in relationships. My eyes were genuinely doing all the things those trashy novels say: beseeching. Beckoning. Talking, etc. My eyes were normally saying: "I love you. Please say you love me back." But all that ever happened was that the men in question got uncomfortable, and always said: "why are you staring at me like that? It's creepy," or, "this is boring. Stop looking at me now."

So, in summary: my eyes do talk, but nobody seems to hear them. The fact that most people are deaf to ocular conversation is very disappointing. I've closed my eyes up again (by which I mean, they're looking away) until such time as somebody might finally notice all the things they want to say.

When it comes to non-romantic scenarios (such as parents yelling at me to look at them) I avoid eye contact when I feel threatened or under attack. It's like, if I don't look at the person, I'm not exposing myself, and I'm retreating and hiding away inside myself where they can't get me. My mother didn't really use to yell that classic thing that people yell at autists: "Look at me while I'm talking to you." More often it was "look at me while you're talking to me" which I find unreasonable. I can't look at people while I'm talking. If I look at their eyes, my brain will be focussed on everything I see there, and will not be able to process my thoughts and talk about them at the same time. Multi-tasking is very hard. So while I'm talking (with my vocal chords), I need to be looking away. If I'm talking with my eyes, I can look into somebody's eyes, but people have been so cruel and nasty to me that I no longer wish to do so.

Hope that explains.

I think I can see fear, that would be an example I gave of showing the whites of the eyes. Or their might be other cues such as standing still or an accompanying facial expression. But those things depend on things outside the eyes.

So for instance, I can read lust with accompanying actions. (well back when I had a body that would engender it) - but if a guy was just standing there and all I had were his eyes to go by, no facial expression, no leaning in - where does all this sparkle and flash and eating me up with his eyes come in?

No, wozeree. It's not about the physical positioning of the eyeballs or eyelids. It's about the emotion.



I am now sad. This thread has reminded me how lonely my eyes are, in a world of people who are blind.

Cookie monster eyes lol 'I will eat them up!'

I think the truth is between the two. Eyes sometimes communicate something. Fear definitely is easy to spot.

But not to the extent that the erm 'literature' you are reading would suggest.

Some people notice it more than others - depends, as always, what one tunes into.

Well if nothing else, this certainly explains why normal simple conversations are killers for me!

sorry to have made you sad Logical Molly - I really didn't want that!

What you said about your eyes is very much my experience too. So this is why I was confused as you kept saying it's not possible for the eyes to convey all these emotions in the books - which is what those metaphors are all about. I am glad that's all sorted out but we still have wozaree who has never experienced it. I don't know what to do about that. I know some people don't interpret as well..it's like the track for information exchange is broken..maybe a neuron somewhere is misfiring. Something.

When my ex and I first got together we spend weeks just sitting like two hapless fools gazing into eachothers eyes. We'd say things like 'this is insane, why are we doing this' but still we couldn't help it. I felt stupid and wonderful at the same time. I think that's called being in love.

I hope you find someone to do this with LM, I really do.

Ah but Leafplant wouldn't that have been accompanied by other recognizable gestures? Surely you touched and spoke and had facial expressions. You didn't just sit up strait with blank looks looking at each other. In this case, i would understand all of that. Say for instance when a man literally looks you up and down. Been there and understood that. It's the reading of still eyes that I don't get. It really could explain a lot about why I have trouble conversing. (I do have worse trouble on the phone though and there are no eyes there.)

word sista, that's exactly what we did. We'd talk a bit as well but then would find ourselves woken up from being lost in eachothers eyes for who knows how long. that's why it's crazy


I've had this more recently with a work colleague. At one point he just snapped at me "What are you doing!?" and all I could say is "I don't know, you started it". Which he did. The first time we met. But he never does it now. His eyes are dead when he speaks to me. So that tells you that something did go on, even if you didn't believe it before.

There is some sort of connection, made through the eyes, where you can sort of feel eachothers feelings. However, this is why I have trouble with aspergers and autism descriptions of people who lack empathy, but then are widely reported not to be able to sustain eye contact (I am assuming for the same reasons Molly outlined above). Well, you can't NOT have empathy if looking into people's eyes feels painful.

I think maybe with you it's the case of interpretation software having a glitch.

Word sista!
Can I use that in my book?

No, I didn't say it wasn't possible for the eyes to convey all those emotions. I said it wasn't possible for eyes to "flash, sparkle, or smoulder."

I fully understand the parts when the writers say the eyes are sad, tortured, pleading, laughing, etc. Those are emotions; emotions being conveyed by the owner of the eyes. The parts I do not understand are the parts where the writers say the eyes are sparkling or glinting or shining, etc.That implies that light is coming out of the eyes as an emotional response, which is not physically possible, and does not reflect reality.

It is not possible for somebody to make their eyes shine voluntarily to convey an emotional response. Our eyes reflect and absorb light. They do not emit it. They can only sparkle or flash or shine if light from an exterior source is shining into them.

Hence, I can understand somebody writing "his eyes sparkled in the firelight, enhancing their deep colour" but I cannot understand somebody writing "his eyes flashed with passion." How on earth can you make your eyes flash with passion? Do you have zapper rays inside them, or something?

If the eyes are said to be flashing or smouldering or sparkling as a result of light shining into them from somewhere else, it makes sense. But if they are said to be sparkling all on their own, then it's nonsense, and I simply do not understand it at all.

do you understand any metaphors at all?

Molly, you just said what I've been trying to say all along.

yeah, the nt's world is full of deceptions of others and self. i couldnt have said it better.
still, we miss the eyes and what they're telling us, yes. eyes show emotion, and it goes past us without our noticing. i was working in subway sandwiches, and there was this cop who came in often in uniforms, and once he showed up in civilian clothes and i didnt recognize him and just asked, can i help you, like any other customer and made his sandwich. and then the manager told me it was him and that he was staring at me, but i had no idea he was staring.