I dont know if I told this story before, but here goes.

There was a person I had a crush on who used to come see our group perform(I was in a girl band) and we would always chat and have great conversations. One day, he offers to come and help me unload some band stuff out of our van. so he comes over and he is getting closer to me as we unload stuff, when I look at him and discover he has an eye patch. so I ask him what happened to his eye, and he then informs me that he has been wearing the patch since we met and basically his whole life.

So, my question is, if someone seemed not to notice a particular physical attribute you had for several months, would you feel like they didnt really see "you" or would you feel like they saw 'you' even more? I was more focused on the person he was than what the details of his features were, but I think he felt differently about it.

it's nice to focus on someone's spirit as opposed to their looks but there should be balance. Not even noticing something so apparent such as an eye patch would tell me that you aren't very observant. That's a big cause for concern.

everyone reacts differently ,so you will get a million answers.

I know if it was me and you said that, I would think huh? is she serious and end up doing the run forest runnnnnnnnnnn.

msharmony

I guess you cared little for him to begin with..Hehe.
But, what do I know....

I f any man talks to me or asks me questions, I am usually very observant of him and his body language. Even though I may not be attracted to him, I usually take a good long look.

If you didn't notice a patch on his eye, you just aren't that into him.

Must have been more focused on his trump baseball cap

SOmething as obvious as an eye-patch I'd take that as a very definite indication that the other isn't interested in me. And not a small "she's not that in to me" but a huge "she doesn't give a chit about me".
I mean, how can you miss an eye-patch?

And I get what you say it could be a 'seeing them more', but... then you WOULD have seen the eye-patch first time around, and you didn't.

I would feel as if you didn't see me or notice me, if we had a conversation. Usually that means making eye contact at least a time or two.
Once or twice missing it, like say you're at a different angle and didn't notice. That's another thing.

I have some experiences of my own, which might have a bearing. Being the particular person I am, when I realized that I had overlooked some rather obvious feature about someone, I put a lot of effort into trying to work out how I'd managed to do that.

In some cases, it was because I HAD seen the feature, but I had made an erroneous assumption about it. With something like an eye patch, for example, the particular one that the person wore when I first noticed them, may have triggered me to assume that it was a COSTUME ELEMENT. My mind would proceed to "post their picture" in my memory WITHOUT the patch, or at least, without any "notes" next to it, saying "eye missing," or whatever.

In some cases, it was because the person actually DIDN'T always have the "feature." Your eye-patch guy might not have worn the patch as constantly as he perceived himself to do.

Overall, I learned a while back, that EVERYONE makes assumptions about everyone else, in a constant stream, even when they are actively working not to. It's built into the whole fabric of being an entity with the ability to perceive, living in a world where what you think is true about each other, shapes what is possible for each entity to do and be.

I don't recall anyone making any particular mistake about me, that upset me particularly when I learned about it. Some times it was inconvenient, sometimes it was disappointing, but in every case, I didn't conclude that the other person was a "bad person" in some way because of their error.

There are other things which have upset me, when I discovered that a person who I was getting emotionally attached to, thought about me. Nothing appearance-related, but plenty of life-habit kinds of things, which caused me to reverse course, and cross them off my "potential intimate partner" list. I can't think of any right now, because I tend to "delete the data" once I decide someone wont work out. It's a lot like reading profiles, and coming across some statement in them which makes me think "oh, too bad, next?" I'm not the "list of red flags" kinds of people. I've got "red flags," I just don't bother to memorize them.

depends
maybe you had the habit of looking down
especially with someone that made the butterflies jump in your stomach

oh my gosh, I think you figured it out. that IS true. When I am really attracted to someone, I tend to not make as much eye contact at all, because I think subconsciously I dont want THEM to see ME(my interest) reflected in my eyes. I could have told that guy ANY of the things he had shared with me about himself in conversation because I was so drawn to/interested in HIM, but the eyes were just the last place I had focused, especially in a dimly lit bar. now that you mention it, Im the same with eye color ... lol

good call.

Did you get to see his Jolly Roger

Is it the rose-colored glasses syndrome?
You don't see them as they are?
You see them with your mind's eye the way you want them to be?

I've done some research into creative writing. I know I have a book or two in my imagination someplace.

Creative writing involves paying attention to details, both in appearance and personality. It involves describing those details to paint a picture of the character you are writing about.
Part of the process is practice. I people watch, animal watch and self-assess to practice noticing the finer details others miss and practice creatively describing them in detail.

I know that people usually don't make physical associations until you point them out. He looks like a turtle, she looks like a deer. Now everytime you see him or her the resemblance is keyed, you can't see them as anything else because your mind is geared to the resemblance.

When I get romanticized about a woman, I have failed to notice she was heavyset because she carries herself and has mannerisms that don't focus on her size. The same goes with personalities, we fail to notice the 'defects' because we are concentrating on our rose-colored glasses view.

I spent most of my like reacting to my rose-colored view of things. I never questioned if my view might be 'off' to reality.
Within this most recent decade I have forced myself to embrace the reality before me. Part of that is to see things as they actually are, without romanticizing them. In short, I pay attention to details. I have better situational awareness and inner emotional clarity.

The example msH gives no longer happens to me.
But...I can remember it happening in the past.
I can also understand it happening for others.

People exist within their own creative romanticized view of the world around them. It helps them deal with reality. From time to time obvious details get missed. When we notice what we missed its like "DUH!".

There are a lot of people in bad relationships because they missed something about the other person or didn't fully understand themselves and now they are living with that mistake.

He may have had an eye patch but it sounds like you were wearing blinders.

clever. I feel like when others might initially take note of the outside, I took more notice of the character. Do you realize your eyes take in EVERYTHING but our mind does not consciously take note of each detail the eye takes in. My eyes had to have seen the patch but my brain chose not to make any significant connections about it.

Having more than one conversation with someone and not looking at them seems rather odd to me..and I'm pretty sure I would notice an eye patch on first meeting.
Perhaps there is some low self-esteem in the inability to maintain eye-contact and is a hurdle to overcome.

no it makes sense if someone is crushing on someone they rarely look at the person for fears they might see right through them

Ive been in situation where I know the woman likes me and she will barely look me in the eye vs my female friends who will look at me to follow the conversation.

Its weird that she didn't notice his eye patch as its something that cannot be missed, but she did say she played in a band so the lighting was probably dimmed most of the time.

You seem to want to excuse yourself for not noticing the obvious.

Evaluating someone's character does not make it okay to be completely devoid of processing other obvious attributes.

If you did that to me, I'd constantly be wondering how many things you're missing in life.