What is your eye contact like?

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i can look someone in the eyes when they are talking very easily

but i struggle to look people in the eye when its me thats talking

I say the same, except that when I do look at them, I only make actual eye contact for a second, then look beyond them over their shoulder, then back to the ground.

If I look at their face too long, I end up focusing on their face and completely miss what they're talking about.

I've taught myself to glance at them quickly at every sentence. Otherwise, I can barely look at people.

I can fake it, looking their way without focusing on anything.

It's hit and miss. It's usually only very good with people I've known for a long time in person, or on a professional level.
I tend to avoid eye contact in general because people seem to think it means I either want to fight them or f*** them lol.

I don't naturally make any eye contact, nor do I try to "fake it". I can force it if I really have to, but it's very uncomfortable.

The only exception to this is for intimidation purposes, when it doesn't cause me much problem. Ironically, I once grabbed someone's head and tried to force them to look me in the eye during a conflict.

I always tend to think I'm really good at this because I don't feel any noticeable discomfort over it, but then sometimes I realize I have an entire conversation with a person (usually they're short) and never one even look at them. I don't even notice it until one of us has walked away. That's really weird, I think!

Nearly nonexistent. If someone points out my lack of eye contact, I'll sort of look past them. It's uncomfortable and intense, and I don't really think to make eye contact normally. Oddly enough, my mom only recently noticed this tendency, but she's plenty socially awkward in her own right.

Now, pets, on the other hand...I have no problem with eye contact there.

Lol. I hate the way cats stare.

If I am stressed/tired I have more difficulty. I used to have difficulty with it overall, but learned it as part of my repertoire to the extent it can be kind of automated. I also used to be averse to people hugging me, particularly those I knew little. But I managed to get used to this and realise it serves a function to them, so just reciprocate and deal with it. I don't particularly enjoy it, but can deal with it.

I myself don't know because I don't monitor my eye-contact. People say I don't make eye-contact, I often get the "look me in the eye!" comment. I used to get it a lot from teachers during elementary and middle school, but they have never managed to force eye-contact on me. My mother says that since I was very little she thought that I was not listening to her because I didn't make eye-contact when she was speaking to me.
I do karate and you're supposed to look people in the eye when you practice with another person. At first I didn't know how to overcome this problem, because it felt unnatural for me to look others in the eye, but then I overcame it by looking at the space between the eyebrows, the forehead or over the head. But I still forget to do it at times and look at the body part I'm about to hit instead of the face.
Yesterday my karate teacher told me "if you act like that with guys, they will understand you like them and they will run away". It was weird to hear that because the guy I like was in front of me and I was not looking him in the eye

I treat it as a game. It excites me, but not uncomfortably so,

I would say that mine is atrocious. But it is something I am very aware of, thanks to many, many, many interview coaching sessions. I can force myself to glance at someone when talking, and am relatively good at staring at someone when they talk in a formal situation. In informal situations, eye contact is very unlikely for more than 5 seconds out of every 5 minutes.

Coincidentally, a recent blog post of mine takes a tongue-in-cheek look at eye contact.

Mines perfectly fine with about three people (two of which are immediate family). Otherwise it depends on the situation.

It's pretty bad if someone is telling me something important or giving me instructions. I cannot cannot cannot multitask, so I can't listen to what they say at the same time as deal with the information coming off their face.

When I'm the person talking, I struggle if it is a one-on-one conversation and the other person is paying proper attention. I won't know how to respond to their eye contact, and again, I can't relay information and process their face information at the same time.


(Edit: I think the reason it is okay with a small handful of people is that we are so comfortable around each other that eye contact is not important when we talk. We can be facing in different directions even. Another reason might be that I know them so well that it is more instinctual to process their "face information", so it is not taking up extra conscious brain power and therefore it's not really multi-tasking).

Oh wow, I'm the complete opposite. I used to have the worst time with eye contact when it came to trying to listen to the other person. I would tell myself that I NEEDED to have good eye contact or they wouldn't like me, so I'd keep my eyes focused on theirs; but then I'd end up staring into them without blinking and it would make me go dizzy. I creeped people out :/ I eventually found a better way to do it though after people kept commenting things like "wow, you're really interested in this aren't you?" or began to assume I had a crush on them. =_=\

Around this time last year I learned the best way to use eye contact on both sides of the conversation is to set your focus between the other persons eyes (bridge of the nose), and then slowly let your vision unfocus as they talk. It looks as if you're looking directly into their eyes, but it's not as tense and there is less strain on your mind. It also makes it so much easier to focus on the information they are giving you.

I don't really have a problem making eye contact -- I think most people have beautiful eyes. If anything, I have the opposite problem to many: My eye-contact is too prolonged and I get semi-hypnotised. So I try to modulate it by looking away regularly, e.g., by looking up and to the left when taking my turn in conversation which (if I recall my NLP correctly) is something most people do when trying to recall something.