Raquel Peel, University of Southern Queensland
“The ick”, much discussed on TikTok and Instagram lately, is where attraction to a current or potential partner is suddenly flipped to a feeling of disgust.
It’s often triggered in an instant, social media users say, by witnessing some kind of turn-off – a bad dance move, a grating laugh, or an off-putting eating style.
So what might be behind “the ick”?
Are you letting ‘the ick’ undermine your chances in love?
One possibility is this is a self-defensive mechanism or strategy to protect against relationship failure, fear of commitment, fear of intimacy, or rejection sensitivity.
Models of relationship counselling practice explain attraction is a “flip flop” phenomenon, where the thing that attracts you to someone today can be the same th...