- Intense eye contact during sex, including orgasm, can make the experience more pleasurable. It enhances your intimacy, and it can increase your desire and pleasure.
- Even outside the bedroom, regular eye contact with your partner can increase your intimacy and strengthen your bond.
- Eye contact can be intimidating, though, so if you or your partner aren’t comfortable with it, incorporating it into your relationship may take time and practice.
What does it mean when someone makes eye contact during sex?
It may be their way of gauging their partner’s enjoyment. In or out of the bedroom, eye contact is one of the primary ways we communicate with one another because our eyes are so expressive. And when you’re in the sack, you may or may not be super chatty, meaning the eyes could be your partner’s go-to to understand how you’re feeling about what they’re doing in the moment. Furthermore, lots of people struggle to verbally tell their sexual partner how they feel or what they want in bed, especially if they’ve only recently met, so looking in your eyes can be a valuable way for your partner to assess whether you’re enjoying yourself or not. In fact, 43% of the attention we give to other people is devoted to their eyes, as opposed to their mouths, which receives 13%—even when they’re speaking!
Eye contact can make sex more enjoyable for some people. Let’s face it, sharing an intense, smoldering gaze is hot and a great way to flirt. While some people prefer to keep their eyes closed during sex (or they do it instinctively), for others, locking eyes can make the act more intense, exciting, and pleasurable. While eye contact can make sex more enjoyable for some, this isn’t universal: some people keep their eyes closed during sex to maintain concentration.
Holding eye contact during sex may mean the experience is meaningful. While eye contact can make sex even sexier, lots of people maintain eye contact with their partner because they care about them and want to feel as close to them as possible. If you’re having sex, you’re (probably) already naked—but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re vulnerable. Making eye contact is a way of showing you really see the person you’re having sex with—and you want them to see you too. It’s possible someone who holds eye contact while having sex really cares about the person they’re sleeping with, or that they view the act of sex as a meaningful experience in itself. Or both!
The Power of Eye Contact
Eye contact can increase feelings of intimacy. Whether you’re in the throes of passion or just eating Taco Bell together in front of the TV, making and holding eye contact with your partner can enhance your intimacy and bring you closer together. St. Augustine said “the eyes are the windows to the soul”—well, that rings true: holding eye contact is a way of knowing your partner and being known by them. And no wonder eye contact feels so intimate: it makes us feel vulnerable and naked—whether we’re wearing clothes or not. But prolonged eye contact doesn’t mean never looking away: experts advise holding eye contact for no longer than 10 seconds, as this can be uncomfortable for the person you’re looking at.
Intense eye contact can make sex more exciting. Locking eyes while you’re hooking up can make the whole experience even more intense and intimate. This has to do with the fact that when you’re aroused or experiencing intense emotions, your pupils dilate, and making eye contact with your partner when you’re both aroused and emotionally heightened can both increase your bond and trigger chemical reactions that enhance desire and make sex more enjoyable. Sexual desire is increased when you make and hold eye contact with your partner because it triggers the release of dopamine. Eye contact also triggers the flow of oxytocin, which makes having sex more intense and pleasurable.
Eye contact can enhance trust. Because eye contact can leaving us feeling so vulnerable, it naturally follows that meeting and holding someone's gaze can yield greater mutual trust. Gazing into someone's eyes indicates you trust them, while feeling someone else's gaze indicates they trust you in return. Mutual trust and reliance is necessary in a relationship in general, but especially in the bedroom, where people tend to be a lot more vulnerable. Of course, just because someone makes eye contact doesn't mean they're automatically trustworthy; studies show deceitful people may intentionally make and hold eye contact because they know it'll help them be perceived as honest!
Why are some people uncomfortable with eye contact?
Eye contact can be intimidating for people with a fear of intimacy. Holding eye contact builds intimacy. But in order to build intimacy, we have to let our guard down, be vulnerable, expose our innermost selves—and that’s absolutely terrifying, especially if you tend to be more emotionally avoidant in relationships. So if you or your partner struggle to make or hold eye contact, don’t worry that it spells doom for your relationship: it may just mean you need to practice. In the same vein, though eye contact builds intimacy, just because someone is quick to make and maintain intense eye contact doesn’t automatically mean they’re emotionally invested. They may just be more comfortable being vulnerable and sharing intimate moments generally.
Most people avoid eye contact with people they don’t know well. Eye contact is great for building intimacy between you and your significant other, but when you accidentally meet the gaze of a stranger on the bus, it might be a little awkward! There’s a time and a place for intense eye contact, and that’s part of the reason it leads to such intimacy: intimacy, by its very nature, is reserved only for certain relationships. So unless the stranger you’ve locked eyes with is your soulmate (it could happen!), it’s not uncommon to look away out of discomfort after accidentally meeting their gaze. Eye contact in the wrong context isn't just awkward; it can also feel dangerous. For instance, if you're in an unfamiliar area of town at night, feeling a stranger's eyes on you can be threatening.
How to Incorporate Eye Contact into Your Sex Life
Tell your partner you’d like to implement eye contact during sex. If eye contact isn’t a regular part of your sexual relationship (or your relationship at all), your partner may be thrown off if you suddenly lock eyes with them next time you’re in the sack—especially if they tend to be uncomfortable with eye contact. Wait until a quiet, peaceful moment when you’re not doing anything (and don’t have anything planned) to casually let them know it’s something you’d like to implement in your sex life. Try presenting it as something you’d like to work toward without putting too much pressure on the situation: “Hey Grady, I’ve been thinking, and it might be nice to incorporate more eye contact into our sex life. Maybe this is something we could try next time we’re having sex.”
Explore how you feel about eye contact. If eye contact isn’t already a habit in your relationship, take some time to consider how you feel about it: if you struggle to make or hold eye contact, especially in bed, explore the potential reasons why. There are any number of reasons eye contact could make you uncomfortable, so try to explore these reasons without self-judgment. Low self-esteem, negative past experiences (including in sexual or romantic relationships), or uncertainty about your current partner could all affect your ability to be intimate with a romantic or sexual partner. If you feel comfortable doing so, talk to your partner about your feelings, and ask them about their experiences and feelings too.
Practice in short bursts. Realistically, you won’t suddenly go from no or limited eye contact to intense soul-gazing with the flip of a switch. It’ll take time, patience, and practice for you both to feel comfortable making eye contact, so start by intentionally incorporating a little eye contact into your daily lives before bringing it into the bedroom. Once you bring it into the bedroom, practice holding eye contact for short periods of time until you both become more comfortable doing it for longer or during orgasm. To practice outside the bedroom, sit facing one another. Set a timer for 5 minutes, and gaze into each other’s eyes without speaking until the timer goes off. Don’t worry if your attention wanders during the 5 minutes—just keep your eyes locked on your partner. After the timer goes off, stand up and hug your partner.
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