Since I was a kid, Iāve never been able to consistently look at ppl in the eye during conversations.
You know when you say a word too many times that it starts losing its meaning and you donāt even know what youāre saying anymore? (re: semantic satiation)
The same thing happens to me with eye contact. If I stare at someone for too long, I start losing sense of their face because Iāve been too hyper focused on looking into their eyes. And if I get too caught up in maintaining eye contact, I risk potentially losing track of what the person was even saying to begin with; which generally just comes off as me being rude/inconsiderate of the other person in the convo.
Iāve definitely gotten better at maintaining better eye contact as Iāve gotten older, but itās still a struggle. I generally have to do a little dance with my own eyes and alternate between looking at different parts of a personās face (or occasionally look elsewhere/fidget with something for a couple of seconds between stares) so that Iām still ālookingā at them most of the time without appearing like Iām uninterested or risk losing focus on what theyāre saying.