Making eye contact is super uncomfortable to me. I've tried practicing it with a friend, and the first thing I did was look down when our eye met. It's almost like a habit.
I first experienced it when I was in middle school. This pretty girl who's a year ahead of me literally kept staring at me for 1-2 minutes in class. It wasn't until someone tapped my shoulder to tell me that the girl is looking at me. Of course, all the girls in the classroom was giggling. I didn't know what to do lol.
This also happened a few other times. I think these girls had guts. They're not like most girls. But I don't want to wait for the stars align to approach a girl because who knows how long I'd have to wait. I also moved recently, and I've been getting lonely lately.
For the first time, I went out and about with the mentality to ask a girl out whenever appropriate. However, the most common reaction I got was a bit ambiguous (or I made it that way cause I'm so bad at this). Our eyes would meet, I look away then immediately look back (I'm still having trouble with this), I see that she's still looking at me, but she looks away. I pretty much give up at this point, but I notice that she's looking at me again through my peripheral vision, so I look back. Then she looks away. But this keeps happening for a couple of more times until I become so uncomfortable that I just turn my direction somewhere else *sigh*. What was the proper thing to do as a guy here?
I don't know if I'll ever get used to keeping my eyes on her even when she looks away. But the fact is that this happened multiple times with multiple girls. Should I just approach anyway? Even though it didn't pass the standard "lock eyes for a few seconds", the fact that she kept looking back and me making things hella awkward is enough of a signal?
What Girls Said
Looking away when someone looks at you, regardless of gender, gives the impression that you are uncomfortable keeping that look alive.
You don't have to look at her eyes directly because that can be intimidating, just like in your case. What you can do is to look at the bridge of her nose, just in the middle of her eyes and like that, you don't really see if she focused her look at your eyes directly.
By looking at the bridge of her eyes, you give her the impression that you are looking at hers and you don't have to move your look from one eye to the other, making it less awkward and a little less daunting for you.
But before you lock this look, you have to work on your anxiety first and that is a totally different topic. Without a certain expertise, you will keep on having a hard time looking at anyone. Good luck.
It either happens or it doesn't.