I'm sure this is a situation we can all relate to. Some people have squint eyes, that even with glasses don't correct 100%. As far as I understand, one eye is always dominant, and that's the one they use to look at you.

My problem is that I can't often tell which eye to look at. It's so uncomfortable talking to someone like that, especially if I don't know 100% which eye I should be looking in.

I usually end up looking between the two eyes or the nose, or just looking around randomly. So how can this be solved? My advice is that people who have squint eyes somehow notify people which eye is their dominant one. For example with some sort of sign on the glasses or something.

I don't mean to be demeaning or anything towards people with squint eyes, and I know they don't choose for it, but I was just wondering about this. There are probably even plime readers that have that problem, and I hope they see this post as it's intended.

Miss manners says... you should match the person's stare with an equal but opposite squint.

Actually - I'm not sure I really understand what you are asking. I've found it difficult to talk to people who have an offset eye (one eye looking straight ahead and the other looking off at a 45 degree angle).

Those are the really tricky characters because they see equally well out of both and you never really know where their point of focus is.

Meh, look at their nose. No one can tell the difference.

My former father in law has a glass eye, it doesn't move in sync sometimes. I always looked at the one that seemed to point the correct way. :)





Creepy fact, did you know modern "glass eyes" are not round. They're more like caps, really big contact lenses. I was told he takes it out every night. I never asked to see, too gross even for me.

I have this dilemma even when people have perfectly normal eyes. At distances closer than four feet, it can just be downright confusing.

Just look at her breasts.

Keep everyone more then 4 feet away. Seems like a simple solution!

I never stare at just one eye, no matter who I'm talking to. I tend to make eye contact to emphasize specific points, or to confirm understanding.

If you want to mess with a dude, when speaking to "him", make eye contact but every few seconds look at his hair line. Its a subconscious mind game you can do to make "him" feel uneasy.

edit: It really does work!

I'm sure that would subconsciously make my boss LOVE me.

...or look at his package every few seconds. Oh wait a minute, that's a different mind game.

Equally disturbing, however.

I would highly recommend crossing your eyes and sticking out your tongue until the other person notices.

On a more serious note: For me, it depends on the person I am talking to. I can look people in the eyes if they have dark eyes or I know that person very well. I meet the gaze of more women over men. When I do look into people's eyes, I either switch what eye I am looking at or somewhere in between. I also tend to watch people's mouths a lot, I guess it makes it easier to hear what the people are saying.

I used to work with a woman who's one eye veered off to the side, but her other eye was looking at you straight ahead.

Now I'm not making fun of her, because my brother had the same problem and had several eye surgeries when he was an infant.

But, it did make it difficult to talk to her. I would look at the normal eye, but the other eye was so distracting.

I usually do that, but it turns out that the most people I meet with offset eyes (finally I know what the right term is) are guys...

Edit: Actually the term is strabismus... Interesting.

Well the reason I'm confronted with this recently is because I've been giving a lot of interviews and stuff, and then you have to really listen to what the person is saying and eye contact happens a bit more often than usual, so the 4ft thing (however far that is in REAL metric measures) doesn't really work.

It seems I'm not the only one with this problem though, so that's good.