The Ick: What It Means, Why You Get It, and What to Do When It's Your Partner

What is the ick?

The ick is the sudden, almost physical turn-off you feel toward someone you were into, usually over something tiny. They run for the bus with their arms flapping. They put on a baby voice to order food. They slurp the bottom of a milkshake for a full ten seconds. Nothing is wrong, exactly. You just cannot unsee it.

That is the defining feature: the ick is a flash of mild disgust over a small, harmless moment, and the attraction is hard to get back afterward. The moment is about them. The reaction is about you.

If you are trying to work out whether your ick means something, you can talk it through with Adoree, an AI relationship assistant you can speak or type to privately. Say the silly trigger out loud and see what sits under it. Most of the time, that second layer is the useful part.

Ick meaning: where the term came from

The phrase is older than TikTok. According to Dictionary.com, the romantic sense traces back to a late-1990s episode of Ally McBeal, where Ally uses "the ick" for a sudden, unexplained lack of attraction to a colleague.

It stayed niche for years. Then Olivia Attwood used it on Love Island in 2017 and explained that once you get the ick, it does not go away. Social listening firm Brandwatch found a small bump in mentions that summer, a much bigger spike when another islander, Leanne Amaning, used it in January 2020, and more spikes through 2021 and 2022 as the term spread on TikTok.

Today it sits alongside the other words of modern dating, from situationships to beige flags. Our guide to modern love words covers the rest.

Common icks: the usual suspects

Ick lists are a genre of their own, and they are funny precisely because the triggers are so small. The examples below are typical of what turns up in those lists, grouped by type.

Notice that the last row is different. Being rude to a waiter is not really an ick. It is information about character, which brings us to the most important distinction on this page.

Is the ick a red flag?

No. A red flag is about how someone treats people: lying, controlling, cruelty, contempt. An ick is about how a harmless behavior lands on you. Red flags deserve action whatever your gut says. Icks deserve a moment of curiosity, because they are as much about the person feeling them as the person causing them.

Why do we get the ick?

The honest answer is that nobody fully knows, but research is starting to look at it. In a 2025 study in Personality and Individual Differences, Brian Collisson and colleagues surveyed 125 single adults aged 24 to 72. As the British Psychological Society's Research Digest reports, 75% of women and 57% of men said they had experienced the ick once it was defined for them. 42% said they had stopped seeing someone after an ick, and 26% had ended a relationship on the spot.

The same study found that people higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to get the ick, and that grandiose narcissism and very high partner standards were tied to stronger reactions. In other words, the ick is partly about the trigger and partly about the person doing the noticing.

There is an older thread of research behind the disgust part. A 2012 PLOS ONE experiment by Charmaine Borg and Peter de Jong found that women who had been sexually aroused rated sex-related stimuli as less disgusting than women who had not. In that lab setting, desire turned disgust down. That may help explain why the ick tends to hit early, when attraction is still thin, and why it can appear later in a relationship when desire has quietly run low.

Put together, the most common drivers look like this:

• A real mismatch. Sometimes your gut is right and the attraction was never solid.
• Very high standards. If one small slip can cancel a person, the bar may be doing the work.
• Fear of closeness. For some people the ick shows up exactly when things start getting serious, a convenient exit before anyone can get hurt.
• Low desire, high stress. Tired, overstretched or resentful people find everything a little more irritating, including the person they love.

Getting the ick early on: should you leave?

On a third date, the ick is often a fast, honest no, and you are allowed to listen to it. You do not owe anyone a relationship because their flaw was small.

Before you decide, ask yourself one question: was I enjoying this before the moment happened? If you were already bored, the slurp just gave you permission. If you were genuinely having fun, the ick may be a flicker that passes, especially if the trigger was a nervous person trying too hard. Give it one more date and see if it fades.

The ick in a long-term relationship

This is the part most explainers skip, and it is the one that matters most for couples. Getting the ick from someone you live with, maybe married, maybe share kids with, feels alarming. It is also common, and it usually means something different than it does on a third date.

In a long relationship, the trigger is almost never the real story. Your partner has always chewed like that. What changed is how much goodwill you have to spare. The ick often shows up after:

• A stretch of resentment about the mental load or an unresolved fight
• A new baby, a move, a job crisis, or months of sleeping badly
• Very little time alone together, so you only see each other in logistics mode
• A drop in desire that has not been talked about

The danger is when the ick hardens. An occasional wince is human. A steady diet of eye-rolling, scoffing and private disgust is closer to what the Gottman Institute calls contempt, which it describes as the single greatest predictor of divorce. Our guide to contempt in relationships explains what that looks like and how couples turn it around.

What to do if you get the ick from your partner

1. Don't announce it. "You give me the ick" is a grenade, not a conversation. Your partner cannot un-chew a sandwich.

2. Look for what changed before the trigger did. Ask yourself: am I tired, resentful, lonely, or short on time with them? That is usually the real topic.

3. Talk about the bigger thing. Try: "I've been feeling far from you lately, and I think it's making everything grate on me. Can we have a night that isn't about the kids or the bills?"

4. Rebuild the appreciation side on purpose. Notice three things a day they do well, and say one out loud. Attraction tends to follow admiration back in.

5. If one habit truly bothers you, ask kindly and once. "Would you mind not doing the voice when we order? I know it's small." Then let it go.

This is exactly the kind of moment Adoree for couples was built for. Each partner talks to Adoree privately, so you can say "I've got the ick and I feel awful about it" without hurting anyone, and work out what is underneath before you bring anything to your partner. If you both talk to Adoree, you get help finding the conversation you actually need to have, which is rarely about the milkshake.

How to get over the ick

Some icks never lift, and that is fine when it is a match you were unsure about. In a relationship you want to keep, the ick usually shrinks when three things come back: rest, time together that is not about logistics, and appreciation said out loud. Fix those and the slurp goes back to being just a slurp.