Communication consists of 3 things: words, the tone of your words, and body language. If you say, “I love you”, to someone, it seems strange for you to stand with your back to that person. And saying, “I love you”, in a very monotone voice doesn’t seem convincing. It’s better to let some passion resound in your voice by stressing “love” and letting your voice sound a little lower and sultrier. It turns out that words only determine 7% of communication! So little?! Yes! And the tone with which you say something determines 38%. However, what communicates most is your body language (such as eye contact), good for 55%!  You can, therefore, make quite a lot clear without actually saying anything!

Eye contact

One form of body language is eye contact. Do you look at someone during a conversation or do you look away? And how do you look? Angry, keen, sad, happy? That also says a lot. Still, we have to be careful not to jump too quickly to conclusions about what we think the other person is trying to communicate. When someone looks sad, that can mean just about anything. It’s a clue that something is going on. And if you make eye contact, you notice more quickly if something is going on.

No eye contact

What I really find noteworthy is when people make no eye contact. There are couples who rarely look each other in the eyes. There can be all kinds of reasons for this. Someone is shy or afraid. Someone is having a hard time and wants to be left alone. Eye contact often gets lost when relationships between partners are no longer doing well. They rarely look at each other. You often see couples in restaurants doing this; each is looking in a different direction. This is a big problem because at that point there is almost no contact anymore between them and the partners only continue to grow apart from each other.

There is contact

When people in relationships threaten to grow apart from each other, they can restore this fairly quickly by looking each other in the eyes for 4 minutes. It sounds strange and there is, of course, the question of whether your partner will cooperate in this. But it turns out that when people gaze into each other’s eyes for 4 minutes, without talking!, contact is made on a very deep level. It causes renewed contact and the restoration of the intimate connection that was once there. The video below shows this very clearly.

Eye contact challenge

Jessica Leavitt speaks of the scientific research what happens when two strangers make eye contact for 4 minutes without speaking. It opens them up. When couples do the same thing, they can connect to their deep inner feelings of love for one another. Have a look a this video to see how it goes. And… maybe ask your partner to try it with you?

Since talking has proven not to be a solution, people look at each other, without talking – a tried and tested method in many types of therapy. The initiative always comes from one of the two people involved. He or she has indicated  wanting to have contact again but needs help doing so. The other person has agreed to cooperate with this.

And how about you? Are you going to give it a try? Who are you going to restore eye contact with? And have you noticed that by doing the MIR-Method, you have more eye contact? I’d love to hear about it. Please write about it below. Thank you!

May feel open about looking another person in the eyes!
Greetings, Mireille

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P.S. Not familiar with the MIR-Method yet? Please go to the homepage. You can watch the video there and also the instruction video. Sign up for our newsletter and 6 weeks of coaching e-mails for extra support!