The Power of Averted Gaze: Why Some Eyes Don't Meet Right Away

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

By a Subject in Movement

We are usually told that looking someone in the eye equates to strength, interest, truthfulness—even love—falling within a scope of immediacy, economy of attention, and performance of confidence. Eye contact has become a currency of legitimacy. But what happens when one looks away? When the gaze doesn’t land immediately? When it hovers, hesitates, and resists the violence of instant readability?

In the early stages of encounter, I often avert my gaze. Not because I am weak. Not because I am shy. But because my subjectivity is in full motion—because I am fully aware of what is at stake. I know that the eyes are windows, but also mirrors, also weapons. I know that in the first few seconds, people are eager to decode, to claim, to possess. To impose an identity. My refusal to meet the gaze too soon is not a symptom of inadequacy, but a strategy of delay. A temporary opacity. A form of resistance.

In that moment, I am not “shy”—I am sovereign.

I am preparing the space of the encounter. Slowing down the violence of projections. Refusing premature interpretation. I am not there to perform. I am not a screen for fantasies. I am not a product made for quick consumption. I am a presence. A becoming. A process unfolding.

This behavior does not arise from insecurity but from depth. It is the opposite of dissociation—it is hyper-presence. To look someone in the eye too early would be to offer a self still in the process of composing its boundaries. My gaze, once it lands, will be earned. It will be intentional. It will carry weight.

To delay is to assert. To avert is to protect the sacred.

Where others seek to impress or please, I conserve energy. I assess. I metabolize the unspoken. My gaze is not absent—it is precise, just not linear. It observes from the periphery. It listens with the whole body. And when it finally rises and meets yours, it does not flatter—it reveals. Because by then, I have chosen. And to be chosen by someone like me means that you have been seen, not scanned. Witnessed, not consumed.

In a world where everyone is performatively accessible, to withhold the gaze is to reclaim interiority. It is to say: I am not here to be seen. I am here to exist.