“Men chasing after ping pong balls! It’s so embarrassing for everyone involved.” This is just one of the answers that dropped into my inbox after I asked people to send me their icks. Others included “high fives,” “vaping and blowing out a ring,” “men in scarves,” “not mixing the sauce into the pasta before serving” and “fussy eaters — can’t be watching a grown man pick mushrooms out of a lasagna.” They were funny to read, and I agree wholeheartedly on picking out food. I once went to dinner with a man who extracted all the arugula from his meal, leaving it in a neat pile on the side of the plate (bizarrely, he’d ordered a pizza topped with a large handful of arugula). It made me feel like I was babysitting a boy, and I was indeed icked out (though this was long before “ick” became a term applied casually in dating contexts).
The term “ick factor” goes back to at least 1979, appearing in a Newsweek article in which “yuck factor” was also used to mean the same thing. But it was only in the 2020s that shows like Love Island popularized it in relation to romance. The meaning we apply to the word “ick” feels distinctly different from other dating lingo. Icks can be less sexual than turn-offs, less severe than red flags and more specific than vibes. Icks can be silly and maybe even unfair (ahem, the person turned off by men in scarves). Dating app Happn recently ran a small poll and found that 27% of respondents had actually broken up with a partner because they got the ick after learning what their hobbies are. Recently, the Netflix series Nobody Wants This featured a whole episode on icks (don’t worry, no spoilers) and it got us thinking about why we’re all so repulsed by specific and fairly odd things. We could be missing out on great loves, all because of a faux pas made by someone who had no idea something about their behavior could be deemed icky.
Here’s what the experts seem to think is going on. Jillian Turecki, relationship coach and author of upcoming book It Begins With You: The 9 Hard Truths About Love That Will Change Your Life, says icks aren’t as special and unique as we might think. Even though our individual icks are different, fundamentally they all come down to the same thing. “It’s not a new concept but with social media we are just talking about it more and normalizing it. I wish more people got the ick from crappy behavior or weak character. Instead it’s mostly like someone said something subtle and random. The person getting the ick then seems to be too picky or unconsciously trying to sabotage getting too close to someone.” And why might we do that? Ah, yes. We’re afraid of getting hurt, being vulnerable or letting someone into our lives, says Turecki. “An ick is not an innate thing. It’s about pickiness and focusing on the wrong things. Being easily turned off is a sign of being judgmental or having unrealistic expectations, a lack of awareness about our own faults and a fear of closeness.” The ick, essentially, is a defense mechanism. Bumble’s sex and relationship expert, Shan Boodram, agrees and says a “sudden lack of attraction” might be “your brain searching for reasons to halt the intimacy even though there truly aren’t any glaring reasons to do so.” Although Boodram thinks that sometimes icks can be your intuition warning you of bigger issues, the reality is you won’t know for sure unless you can see past the ick and explore further.
We shouldn’t be too harsh on ourselves — our brains aren’t always helping us out. Boodram explains: “When it comes to choice and decision-making, psychologists have identified two kinds of thinking: system one and system two. System one is the fast, barely perceptible opinions and choices we make without really having to think about them. System two is where we weigh pros and cons, utilize critical thinking and try to gather more information before coming to a conclusion. For the most part, we utilize system one thinking when forming romantic connections, especially in the beginning.” This might stop us wasting time getting to know every single person we meet but it’s also a risk-averse way of thinking that Boodram says can consign us to “a life led by fear vs curiosities.” If there’s a genuine connection and you know you like someone — apart from what gave you the ick — it’s worth using some deeper system two thinking.
It is possible to recover from the ick. At Refinery29, we’ve interviewed women to ask how they did it. Most of them did what Turecki advises, which is to focus on the parts of the person you find attractive. “Truly, it is about what you focus on,” Turecki continues. “And having the self-awareness to understand that perhaps you are trying to get some control in a situation where you normally have none — such as when you like someone and then feel too vulnerable.” According to Bumble, a third of people believe they can move past icks when they occur. This is not to say that we should force ourselves to ignore icks that don’t shift just because we want to find a partner but as Boodram says: “If we remind ourselves that all people are worthy of love, we can stop assessing people along the binary of good and bad, hot or not, ick or attractive, etc… Look at it as a mismatch of preferences.” That way we might stick things out longer and find out for real if there’s compatibility.
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This article was originally published on refinery29.com.