Of mainly academic interest, but how much eye contact would you say is normal in a friendly conversation between two people who don’t know each other very well, when one of them regards herself as unavailable (and isn’t seen by others as a tease or a flirt).
Hard to quantify, I know. Perhaps an easier question is: how long could two people look into each other’s eyes when parting (4 feet apart, smiling, saying nothing), without it “crossing the boundary”?
:eek:
You’re probably OK until someone’s pupils begin to dilate.
I think he was flirting with you.
Oh that’s OK, I thought I’d revealed myself as having a major sociopathic disorder.
I think the better question would be, how much eye contact constitutes stalking?
What do you mean? I’m not talking about staring, or anything that was non-consensual. I’m talking about socially-skilled people who know how to tell whether the other person feels uncomfortable with being looked at, and would respond accordingly. In case it wasn’t clear it was the unavailable person who began increasing the eye-contact.
Prolonged staring does not constiture stalking, in any case.
G. Odereida: It has to be combined with a facial expression. If someone is smiling slightly and doesn’t look away when you look at them, I would call this flirting.
If this is the only part of the conversation of interest, and nothing else happened earlier that was in any way flirty… then I would say that someone trying to hold my gaze for more than about a second or so would give me the impression that they perhaps had something else to say (flirting wouldn’t be my first thought).
But facial expression, plus the tilt of the head, does makes a significant difference. Someone looking at me with a level glance and a smile is just going to seem friendly. Someone looking at me with a smile and head tilted slightly down (so they are effectively looking up from under their eyebrows to see me) is going to come across as acting coy or flirty. Or it would seem that way to me.
Did that make sense?
It would seem to me to depend on the setting at hand. If someone locks eye with me at the end of a business meeting while shaking hands and spekaing about the meeting, I’m not likely to think it flirting even if it’s extended eye contact. (unless, of course, he’s mind-numbingly cute…)
However, if I’ve been to dinner with someone, even a casual acquaintance, and the eye contact happens at all or lasts for more than a few seconds, then I’m more inclined to think flirting - either that or I have a humongous piece of spinach stuck in my teeth.
But then, you have to understand that I’m not the best source on this. My last boyfriend said he tried flirting with me for MONTHS before I caught on, yet I’m inclined to read the wrong thing into the gaze of the Starbucks Barista down the street as he’s making my mocha. 
It isn’t flirting unless it occurs during sex…
As long as you both begin to drool at the same moment, then it was meant to be. Matching sex bibs are in order for your wedding. 
I was always taught that it was polite to maintain eye contact during conversation. Sometimes I do so without thinking about it. I have had several people tell me that I was intimidating them, because I was basically staring at them the whole time we spoke. I don’t realize when I do this. So to answer the question, just be careful if it’s Cyclops making the eye contact.
I always maintain pretty constant eye contact during a conversation. That’s not flirting. Eye contact without conversation or from a distance may be construed as flirting, but it might not necessarily be so.
Dilating or contracting pupils, along with other cues previously mentioned, may well be more significant.
Thanks for these replies. There isn’t really anything in the conversations that occurred that I could point to and say “You were flirting with me”, but she did look at me more than most people do during conversation.
The important question occurred a couple of days later when the group was breaking up. We’d already said our goodbyes and the others had already left the area. I was turning to go and smiled at her. Her boyfriend was behind her, oblivious to any of this. She returned my gaze, also smiling. We looked into each other’s eyes (sorry, didn’t look to check pupil size), and she was happy to hold my gaze until I turned away. We looked at each other for a few seconds; I had thought this situation might occur and made sure it was a significant length of time before I turned away.
So now, a few weeks later, she’s saying she’s not available, didn’t I realise she has a boyfriend (don’t worry, I only asked her once, and I’m not bitter or planning to hassle her about this). Of course I knew she had a boyfriend; the thing is they had only been together for 2 weeks and there was almost no chemistry between them. In fact there was even some hostility between them, and they live 150 miles apart.
So what I’m wondering is whether I’m right to read some significance (which she is now denying) into her interaction with me. If they’d been together 2 years I would say, of course she was flirting, they were just having an off weekend, and she never had any intention of leaving him. But when it’s 2 weeks, I’m not sure she can get away with saying to herself that it’s just harmless fun, and that I should have known what the situation was. For the record we’re both in our 30s.
As I say, this is mainly academic; there are other issues and I’m not going to hassle her about this.
It does if it’s through the window.
with a telescope.