Let’s Me See Your Eyes
I was watching a movie recently and in one of the scenes a couple were on an anniversary date and they were talking, well, the wife was talking. See, the husband is a super introvert who only speaks important words while she is an extroverted chatterbox. So, as is her nature, she did most of the talking and she spoke about her first impression upon meeting her husband and why she choose him. They’d been set up by friends and she said she thought he was stuck up and self-absorbed initially but as she spoke to fill the many silences he would look at her. That is, every single time her voice came up his eyes were on her. His responses were monotonous but it was obvious he was listening and so she was able to excuse his lack of conversational enthusiasm to it being his personality. I mean, they had conversations as their relationship progressed but you could tell that talking wasn’t his strong suit but he thrived as a listener as she saw in his eyes.
As I watched I thought about how people who don’t keep eye contact bother me. This is not an excuse for those who stare though, that’s just wrong! So there was a guy asking me out at some point who never looked at me while we spoke, not literally of course, but how can you be talking to a person and not looking at them? I could never catch his eyes and it was off putting to say the least and it struck me as creepy, I mean, it’s just the two of us what happens in a room full of people?! So yeah, that didn’t go well.
There’s that adage that talks about the eyes being a window to the soul, and on this subject I think it is very true. Eye contact is a body language that is key in communication as it lets the other person know that you’re paying attention to what their saying or doing. The eyes are on your face for a reason one of which is context, it creates context. Imagine just seeing an open mouth, it would be rather hard to know what the expression depicts the moment the eyes come into play it becomes easy to determine whether the mouth is open in a scream, an exclamation, surprise… or imagine a public speaker or news caster addressing their audience with their head in a book, you get where I’m going with this.
As a matter of fact the eyes show true meaning and emotions, they complete the story. You can tell an excited laugh apart from a nervous laugh because of the eye. The eyes show hurt, admiration, spite, pride, love, intention and a host of other details that could be lost in translation because the eye is hidden. Do you know that the confidence you intend to exude can be boosted by your ability to maintain eye contact and that the chances for your pitch to be believable and accepted is determined by how well your eye contact does in inviting people in to engage with you?
So in whatever situation- face to face, addressing an audience, and especially in a relationship (romantic or not), maintaining eye contact is important and if you happen to be one of those who like to look everywhere but, please unlearn that, its a bad habit that rubs off on people as a variety of negative assumptions including that you’re shady or not trustworthy. It goes both ways, maintaining eye contact is as important when speaking as it is when listening.
