why should I make eye contact when I talk?

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people listen with their ears, not their eyes, and I talk with my mouth, not my eyes, so who cares if I stare at the window while I talk

People don't think you are paying attention if you do not sustain eye contact. Silly, isn't it?

It's something wired into their brains. They do it without thinking. But when someone doesn't look at them, they are not used to it.

I hear the NTs think you're not being honest if you don't make eye contact - like you're hiding something.

If you don't make eye contact while speaking to people they'll not know if you're speaking to them.
They could very well think you're talking to yourself.

When you listen to others you not only need to maintain some eye contact to let them know you're listening, you also need to make nonverbal body movements to let them know you understand what they're saying.

I sometimes watch talk shows on TV with the sound turned off so I can just focus on the visual aspects of conversations between two or three people.

Someone told me they had the impression that :
1- You're not listening to them.
2- You're not self-confident and afraid of them.
3- You're not honest.

I've been kicked once because I didn't look into someone eyes when we talked... I didn't even realized I acted differently ! And I agree with you, where you look shouldn't be important but from what I read, when you want to find a job, they often "analyse" your personality by studying your attitude.

Maybe people are supposed to "analyse" others all the time and not only "talk".

No one has ever given me any hint that they have a problem with my level of eye contact, but I can tell you for sure that I do not sustain eye contact with anyone. Rarely, at any rate. I don't totally avoid the eyes, but I only look at the person's eyes for a couple seconds at the most, before needing to look away. And if someone is looking into my eyes for a long time, I have to look away.

If anyone has a problem with it, they haven't said so to me. And if NTs really do look into each other's eyes for sustained periods of time, they act differently towards me.

You don't have to. It's not a law that you must. It's just that in this culture, if you do, what you say will have a greater impact and the listener will process what you say easier.

If being understood is important to you then you should master eye contact. If it is too uncomfortable, then don't worry about the eye contact.

I mean, we don't have to say please and thankyou either, but we get a lot farther if we do.

Also, when someone is feeling guilty they'll not look you in the eye.
Last time I visited my ex he did this.
I felt like yelling 'look at me!' Only because I was actually trying to make more eye contact with him.

I used to always get yelled at to look at someone when I tell them things. I thought it was because they could not hear what I was saying.

The only reason is that NTs just expect everyone to do it because it's what they do.

If you do not make eye contact people might think that you are bored with the conversation.

It can make you look a lot more normal to others if you do it right which leads to that a lot people might treat you differently.

Think about it, do you have to do anything? Well, yeah, you have to do some things... I don't stress over things like eye contact. Until I saw posts on WP I didn't even know it was such a big deal. No one cares if I make eye contact or not.

It is especially important in job interviews. The interviewer wants to think you are interested in the job. (As if taking the time to be interviewed wasn't enough.) They also expect a hand-written "thank you" note sometime after the interview. I don't know if it's an ego thing or if people in human resources are insecure. I might have lost a job or two because I refused to make a separate trip to the interview place just to give a "thank you" note. Gas was $4.00/gallon and many of my interviews were 30-40 miles round-trip.

Having the kind of job that requires all that doesn't matter to me. I wouldn't be able to function in that type of job anyway. It's best to think outside the box in these situations. Where there's a will, there's a way.

What's annoying is that while for an NT, eye contact enhances communication (if they are from certain cultures), for me, it results in a partial breakdown of communication. So I have to choose between pretending to listen and actually listening.