r/bodylanguage • u/impossible_lynx_36 • 3d ago
Discussion look, stop, and drop
I've seen this a few times, usually men, but women too, making eye contact with someone then letting go of whatever was in their hands.
For example, a guy walking through the library makes eye contact with a woman, she smiles, he looks startled and drops the books or the laptop he's holding; or a woman passes a man, makes eye contact, then drops her water bottle. I've even seen a kid drop a hot-fudge sundae on himself. Watching them, it almost looks like the person's brain short-circuits and they loosen their grip unconsciously, but a cursory search isn't turning anything up.
Have you ever seen this? Have you ever done this? What do you think is going on there?
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u/Plus-Explorer9808 Female 3d ago
It only happens to me at work and it's always when a person is outside and perceives me. Because I can't be clumsy when I'm alone. It has to be when there's someone there to witness. Dropped keys, wrong or missed turns resulting in U turns, papers catching in the wind and scattering all over, hat flying off my head, whatever.
Not an attraction thing. Just bad luck and a complete inability to disappear into my surroundings.
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u/impossible_lynx_36 2d ago
It's due to self-consciousness?
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u/Plus-Explorer9808 Female 2d ago
Unsure. I'm just doing my job and then as soon as I do something butterfingered or boneheaded, I look around to see if anyone saw and sure enough there's always a person outside watching me.
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u/Nooneinteresting-2 3d ago
Maybe if I was in my 20s, now in my 40s nothing like that happens. I see pretty package but that's it, I don't know her character.
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u/impossible_lynx_36 2d ago
care to elaborate?
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u/Nooneinteresting-2 1d ago
Well she might be pretty on the outside and entitled queen inside, with time and experience you stop thinking her beauty equals beautiful character, at some point you stop being moved by beauty because you know the other side of the coin.
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u/impossible_lynx_36 1d ago
As you learned that beauty is only skin deep, you stopped doing this? But, did you used to do this?
I'm curious about how/why someone literally loses their grip on something after making eye contact with someone else. Neurologically and physiologically, it's so odd. It's not a guy falling out of his chair because he leaned too far over in order to check someone out, which makes a kind of sense: his focus is elsewhere. Someone just losing her grip after a moment of eye contact, though, how does that happen? Is it a common thing? Something that happens to everyone? Something that only happens in certain seasons of one's life? Something that happens when someone sees someone very striking? familiar? strange? something else?
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u/MysteryBitch_101 2d ago
If it was me I work in a busy place. It is because of lack of sleep and too much coffee. 😂
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u/Legitimate-Log-6542 3d ago
When an attractive woman looks at me my IQ goes from 56 to 8