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The Levels of Eye Contact

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The Levels of Eye Contact

Eye contact is important, especially in dating and gauging people’s attraction to you. Everyone should have a basic understanding of what each person is eye-coding them in any given situation, and it doesn’t take a cryptographer to figure it out. Or if it does, then fuck it, I’m that cryptographer. Here is an entirely overly-analytical, and mostly-satircal-but-kinda-true-too guide to the levels of eye contact and what they mean.


That or you have some mustard on your face.



Level 2: Glance (Conscious) – The second level of eye contact is the first type of eye contact where you’ve possibly made a positive impression on a person. This is when your eyes and theirs happen to meet and then they look away immediately, except they look away consciously, whether it be shyness, awkwardness, or disinterest. Body language studies claim that a person who breaks eye contact with you by looking down is intimidated (i.e., attracted) and a person who breaks eye contact by looking to the side is indifferent (i.e., not attracted). I have no idea if this is true or not. But if someone breaks eye contact with you quickly and intentionally, it’s usually a polarized response: they’re either attracted and momentarily self-conscious by your presence, or they’re uninterested and avoiding making contact altogether. Most people are not comfortable holding eye contact with strangers, what would signal the interest here is that their eyes were drawn to you in the first place. So it’s not the breaking it so much that is important, what’s important is that they consciously looked at you.

Differentiating between Level 2 eye contact and Level 1 eye contact is subtle and hard to do consistently with any sort of accuracy. Although you do pick up some acuity over time. It’s impossible to ever be 100% certain what someone else’s intentions are, so why not just assume everyone who makes strong eye contact with you is attracted until proven otherwise?




Level 4: Double Glance – Here’s a good habit to get yourself into once you’re able to maintain eye contact with people walking around. Any time you make eye contact with someone attractive and they look away, keep looking at them for another few seconds. A percentage of them will look at you a second time. In my experience, this is a clear sign of physical interest, and 95+% of the subsequent interactions you initiate with this person will be received warmly.

Girl in tunnel turning around looking at camera



Girl in street looking at camera


Level 7: The Eye Fuck – This is someone who makes eye contact, holds it, smiles, and then never stops. They just keep staring and smiling, and staring and smiling, sometimes for minutes at a time. Eye fucking is the first level of eye contact that makes the leap from “interested/curious” to “they want to have sex with me.” Eye fucking doesn’t withhold any intentions. It’s about as much interest as one can possibly display through eye contact alone. If you get eye fucked by an attractive person and don’t act on it, you’re probably blind or mid-seizure. I can’t think of any other reasonable explanation.

When undesired, the eye fuck is exceedingly creep. If you’re a man and you regularly eye fuck women who do not reciprocate or smile back, then you likely have pepper spray in your near future.

Eye fuckers will often end up approaching you if you don’t approach. Although many of them will give up if you don’t approach for a few minutes and assume you’re not interested. If you’re a man and a woman is eye fucking you, the hint should be clear: she wants you to talk to her.

Level 8: Dreamboat – The dreamboat happens when someone has fallen for you. This is when you wake up in the morning to someone staring at you with that dreamy smile like they’re drunk or stayed up all night sniffing glue. It’s the way two people look at each other when cuddling and making cutesy noises while rubbing their noses together. The dreamboat almost never happens before you’ve had sex with someone, and if it does, they’re either Amish or it’s a giant red flag. Usually it starts happening after a month or two into a new relationship, although it can happen in as little as a couple nights together (or in rare circumstances, one).

Man eye contact



Crazy funny man opened his eyes isolated on a white backgroundLevel 9: The Crazies – The 10th and final level of eye contact cannot be explained as much as experienced. When you experience The Crazies, a person doesn’t even have to be present to see them. They haunt you. They’re everywhere and nowhere. It’s the guy who wakes you up by banging on your window at 3AM crying that you never called him back. Or the girl who faked being pregnant because she thought it’d get you to get back together with her. Or the guy who carved your name into his arm as a birthday present. They’re the eyes that look at you in earnest when they say they want to quit their job and move to Tahiti so that you two can be together perfectly alone forever. The Crazies signify delusion, hopeless emotion, and the complete loss of a grip on reality. The Crazies often come with a restraining order.

People who have seen The Crazies and lived to tell about it do so with a level of humility and despondence.  Most have dealt with their share of irrational and dramatic relationships. Some have perhaps witnessed The Crazies for fleeting moments — an enraged girlfriend who ran around at him with a baseball bat, the guy who left her 43 angry voicemails in one night — and these people pass these stories of insanity around almost as a badge of honor. But those who have seen the depths, looked into the eyes and seen the true amorous insanity behind them, like any true veteran they prefer to keep the pain and horror stowed away in their hearts, not to see the light of day. They say all is fair in love and war, and in certain places and at certain times, the two don’t feel so differently. And like any war story, living it and telling it do neither justice.


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