“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 …read more
Source:: Refinery29
