For context, it seems like guys have a hard time making eye contact with me. Whether it be a brief interaction or working together, they always avoid eye contact with me, yet have no problem with looking at other people (regardless of them being a man or woman) in the eyes when they speak. If this were just a couple of guys, I wouldn’t be making this post, but is seems like the majority of them struggle to make eye contact with me. On the other hand, when I interact with other girls, they have no problem making eye contact with me.

I consider myself to be an easy-going person, yet this always happens. I also don’t think it’s my looks; I consider myself average compared to most girls.

Any guys have any insight on this?

46 comments

  3. Embarrassment. I don’t wanna seem like I’m staring, fearing I might come across like a creep

  5. Perhaps you maintain eye contact to a greater degree than typical. For guys, it might be taken to be an indication of your interest, which they don’t wish to reciprocate for any number of reasons.

  6. Cause everyone screams harassment or creep when you make eye contact with them or even look in their general direction for a split second

  9. I don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable. Some bad experiences in my teens have caused a little voice in the back of my mind to go “don’t look, they’ll be creeped out” even though i’m in my late 30’s by now.

  10. I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable or worse, get myself in trouble. I can maintain eye contact for a very long time but I’m old enough to know that that makes some people uncomfortable. For their sake I dial it back from ‘Inquisitive Owl Stare’ to ‘Nonchalant disinterested tortoise’. Most people don’t need someone else staring into their soul during a casual conversation, lol.

    On top of that, you’re probably underselling how attractive you are and are just making guys nervous by being pretty. They probably want to look at you but they think of that want as untoward. If a guy looked at you too long wouldn’t you find that a little creepy? Well so would most people but no one knows for sure how much is too much. Simpler to just avoid looking unless necessary.

    Don’t get me wrong, the guys you’re talking about are probably checking you out they just don’t want to seem like they’re gawking. We can be pretty simple creatures sometimes.

  11. “Why are you looking at me like I am a piece of meat on a plate… WTF is wrong with you, I am going to HR”……

  13. There are major ramifications of making eye contact with women in today’s day and age. Especially, if you aren’t attractive.

  15. I can only speak for myself but I could imagine this being true for a lot of men.

    Firstly you may be more attractive than you feel, but let’s assume you are not. Even as a woman with average looks, you could come across attractive to a lot of people still. That’s the nature of being average.

    I’m not a particularly attractive man. I am also rather shy and socially anxious. That being said, I don’t have difficulty with all women. A major factor is how outgoing and loud the woman is. If I’m speaking to a woman who is also somewhat shy, or who looks at me in a funny way when I try to talk to them, as if they’re somewhat anxious about the interaction, that amplifies my anxiety tenfold. You could possibly be giving off these sort of cues without realising it. What’s happening there is if I get even the remotest sign that I’m making someone else feel uncomfortable, especially a woman (because of the obvious connotations there), my social anxiety causes me to immediately internalise that as if I’m being creepy somehow. Those are the times when I struggle to look a woman in the eye.

    On the other hand, if a woman is quite forward and open with me, it fills me with enough confidence to reciprocate. It puts me at ease that we can have a friendly interaction and that I’m not giving off any vibes I don’t want to.

    I’ll give you two examples from my own life. I’m only using romantic examples because they exemplify the problem at its extreme, but it applies to casual, formal and platonic interactions too. I remember asking a girl out in school once, I must have been around 16-17. She was way out of my league and I probably knew what would happen but I thought fuck it. She replies rather bluntly and in front of everyone “nah you’re way too skinny”. And you know what? I wasn’t embarrassed in the slighetst. The way she brushed it off like this happens every day, as if my advance didn’t phase her at all, squashed any anxiety I could have had. Her friends laughed, mine laughed, I laughed. And I would go on to do this multiple times throughout the year, each time she would give a different reason as to why I was not to her standard. It became somewhat of a joke I was aiming towards myself, but it was still a positive interaction with me because we were confident enough around one another to be blunt and without any awkwardness.

    Now for example B. I was at a bar once, loud music and what not. I was actually with my girlfriend at the time who was chatting to a friend she had seen while I was ordering drinks. I was making small talk with a girl next to me, one who I was not particularly attracted to, and due to the loudness of the music and not wanting to shout, I leant in to speak more closely to her ear and ask something innocuous like “could you tell me where the toilets are” or “what’s a good cocktail to buy here” or something to that effect, can’t remember the question. Her response as soon as I moved half an inch was to instantly recoil with a face of shock and horror as if I was going to kiss her. Of course I cleared up my intentions and my girlfriend returned (who was more attractive than her by a considerable margin) but it still sat with me for ages. Had that been somebody I knew from work or school or who was in my social circle, that’s somebody who I wouldn’t be able to look in the eye for a long while.

    I know those scenarios are very specific and are more romantically-oriented than your situation but I hope it still gives some transferable insight as to why some men might be uncomfortable around some women. If either of you gives off the remotest vibe that you are uncomfortable or nervous, it can be quite easily reciprocated and it can spiral into a destructive loop of awkwardness pretty quickly given the right personalities.

  16. My observation has been that women always keep a constant eye contact when you are interacting with them. With men it’s different, you make eye contact then you break it then do it again and so on.

  19. It can come across as creepy or odd if you stare at someone too long. Some guys just play it safe and don’t want to trigger some women as they might think that they are trying to hit on them.

  20. Men are not allowed to look in the direction of women without the possibility of being shamed on tik tok. There are many videos of women in skin tight clothing purposely filming themselves in front of men for the sole purpose catching these men glancing at them. They then post the videos online for the world to see. That is the world we live in.

    I’m not saying that men think that all women are wearing a go-pro to try to catch men looking at them, but men have gotten the message that women do not want to be looked at or acknowledged by men.

  22. Fear of being called a creep and thus losing my fucking job just for looking back and smiling. An ugly face like mine CANNOT be seen as innocent.

  26. We have the potential to be accused of harassment or being creepy or problematic or rude or scary or mean or demeaning or making women uncomfortable at any time and it is always taken seriously, the better question is, why would we risk all of that.

  27. Y’all seen those videos lately where a girl accuses a random dude for being a creep after he glances in her direction for a second? Yeah I’m not trying to end up in one of those.

  28. After #metoo, guys avoid lingering eye contact at work like it’s a colonoscopy appointment. 🤣✌️

    they don’t want to get caught staring, they aren’t afraid of you as much as they are afraid of HR.

  29. Because women consider it a cardinal sin for a man to look at them these days. You got this trend of women trying to expose “creepy” men looking at them at the gym. It’s got so bad and ridiculous that people are starting to call out this bullshit when just a few years ago, women doing this got massive sympathy on social media.

    Hell, it’s now a CRIME for men to look at women on London subways in the UK, I think.

  30. If you are attractive, that will be the reason. If a woman is really hot and I’m attracted to her, I will not want to be caught staring at her, as to not make her uncomfortable.

  31. It’s dangerous to stare.
    It’ll get called out then everyone labels you or speaks behind you back and you have a whole confrontation coming your way for it to ever stop.

    The sexual implications are heavier if you’re pretty, which makes it worse, or if you’re not animated during the conversation which makes it feel like you’re more able to notice and call out stuff people say or how they act so people are slightly on-guard.

    I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s just the culture now. People can’t control if others read too much into what they’re saying and make it a whole group thing, so people are more guarded.
    Like it’s easier for a man to not look at you than you saying a man is a creep for looking at you then the whole group thinks he’s a creep and he can’t do anything about it because men are always doing the bad shit.

    I would just not prolong eye-contact and not worry about it, it isn’t you, it’s just a man will never be confronted or shamed if the person talking that he’s staring at is another man. It’s just easier than to guess.

  32. College student level perspective here. Compared to what others are saying with the “one way trip to hr” at work, in my case I’m kinda on the mid-low scale for physical attractiveness. Even checked with the r/amiugly and they all were sorry for me lmao. If I can, I’d rather not look at a girl and ruin their day. :'(

  33. I’m Latinoamerican. I find out that in USA men today are fear to be men. That’s so sad. In Latin America we both, male and female, look each other just normally in the eye. I think there is this feminist movement that are making normal behaving men to be fear and being catalogue as perverts. Sad.

    An answer for this question could be that men get intimidated by your eyes. Maybe confused. Maybe you have very expressive eyes and man don’t know how to react properly to them. They don’t know how to anymore. The manly phycology is a construction. Part of it is confidence. But men today can’t be confidence. Being so can get them in trouble pretty easy. Sad.

  34. many possible reasons:

    – you are distractingly sexy (NOT the same thing as beautiful)

    – or, you are distractingly ugly

    – you seem intimidating and terse

    – you interact with mostly shy men

    – holding strong eye contact is sometimes unconscious domination game between guys. They likely avoid playing it with you

    – thye have issues with what you are saying. Men are bad at poker-face when someone says something they dislike or think silly, so they avoid eye contact

    – social inertia. Maybe its just that randomly one or two men did not want to make eye contact with you for whatever reason, and the rest just picked up on it? Now its basically “tradition”.

  35. Men have been beaten I to submission. “Toxic masculinity” and the like has forced us to assume that we are always being judged.

  36. Lack of confidence, shyness, fear of being called a creep. I always avoid eye contact with my crush, even if she’s looking at me, I don’t even know why – I just naturally do it.

  37. This took me ages to get over and I still kinda do it with the women I work with.

    I had one woman get fucking weird and call me a creep once when I was zoned out and since then I had a small voice in my head saying “don’t do it again or it’ll happen again”.

    It’s like being bitten by a dog. You know the next one is probably fine, but you’re still a bit worried.

  39. I can only say why I try to avoid eye-contact with certain women:

    • I don’t want her to know I like her

    • I don’t want her to know I *don’t* like her

    • She’s trying to use eye-contact to ‘plead’ with me for co-operation or acquiesce to her stated request or need. This feels like manipulation to me so I don’t want to give her the opportunity.

    • She’s talking absolute nonsense and I don’t want her to think in any way that I’m actually taking her seriously

    • She’s hypersensitive to facial expressions and I don’t want to give her the wrong idea

  40. Because we don’t want to seem creepy. The fine line between eye contact and staring creepily is attractiveness.

    I’m aware that I’m not the most attractive person, so I avoid obvious eye contact

  41. I’d wager it has something to do with the stigma of guys being a dangerous predator to women and children by default of their masculinity that society finds neat little ways to sneak in reminders on a constant basis. Women’s only groups, side long looks for any guy with a child in his company, collective guilt for men, double standards of who’s allowed to complain about what, being ignored by women when single and then chased by women when taken as if he needs to be vouched for, those special drink orders in a bar just in case a guy is creeping you out, the popularity of man shaming in media, that the feminine platform has literally emphasized not having contact with women in public for like a decade now, that men are guilty until proven innocent if accused by a woman. This really could be a much longer list.

    I’m just regular dude standing on the sidewalk and it is a regular occurrence that women will go arm lengths out of their way just to avoid getting too close while I’m standing there not having even looked at them. To be perfectly honest I don’t make eye contact with women because the social stigma has done a good job wearing down the collective psyche of guys meanwhile most women seem too frail/unhinged/unpredictable to safely handle.

    I’m sorry but is this not what women have specifically requested, u/admirable ? Non rhetorical question.

  42. Most girls avoid eye contact with guys anyway so I just do the same. Each gender has trust issues, women think that most men are creeps and I don’t want to be looked at as one so I stay in my lane and you stay in yours. Have a nice day.

  44. I’ve been avoiding eye contact with women/girls since high school, because I’m socially awkward and that tends to make people think I’m creepy. While it hurts me deeply that i’m perceived as such, i understand the better safe than sorry thing, and just always look off into the distance. I’ve gotten so good at staring straight forward, that when people do cross my gaze, my eyes don’t follow the movement. When I greet people coming into the store I work at, I stare past them. I can look a dude in the eyes easy, but i also don’t maintain eye contact with people because it feels weird after having trained myself out of it.

    About a year ago, i was hanging out with friends, and we had recently added a girl to the group who used to be friends with the group, but not me because i wasn’t in the group yet when she was. We went out somewhere and she happened to be sitting across from me at the bar we were hanging out in. I spent my time staring out the window, which made her think that I wasn’t having a good time. She got my attention and asked if I was okay, and then jokingly told me that I was killing her vibe. We were at a karoake bar and so everyone was singing along to the songs that drunk people were singing. So she was trying to get me to look at her and sing along to the songs. She was staring me in the eyes, and it was agonizing. I held eye contact for about 3 or 4 seconds at a time, but kept looking away, which prompted her to reach across the table to me and i think she grabbed my arm; i’m foggy on the details. The thing that i remember most about that night was how intense the eye contact felt. I try to avoid that intense feeling as much as possible though, because I do stupid things when I feel that way.

  46. We either don’t want to come off as a creep or we like you and don’t know how to approach you without being awkward

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