The Ick List
Or, the problem with defining desire.
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Desire has always had the capacity to contain a neurotic element. Maybe the more romantic among us want to interpret desire as free from these sorts of hang-ups, as natural and unencumbered by intellectualized inhibitions, but it just isn’t true. Desire is fickle. Desire can shift on a whim.
And yet, desire is often impossible to categorize, try as we might.
This is what “the ick” represents. The phenomenon of “getting the ick” refers to when someone you were previously attracted to (or at least, could have been attracted to) does something minor, even unconscious, that halts the attraction: seeing someone with food stuck in their teeth, or try and fail to hail a cab. In their original form, they’re even less than turn-offs, and certainly less consequential than what we’d call a red flag or dealbreaker. Like these similar terms, however, they all embody an attempt at defining and classifying our wants that ultimately tells us little about our true desires.
“The ick” is now several years old. It is one that will probably be with us in perpetuity, likes its relatives. And it is indeed particularly apt, describing a feeling we otherwise did not have a name for. But rather than leaving it as that, another word for a feeling that will in all likelihood pass, we’ve inflated it into something more.
I’ve mostly interpreted the ick as something lighthearted, but in taking a closer look at how we’ve begun talking about it, I’m witnessing a deeper problem unfold. For many women, it seems as though the ick is an actual hindrance to their dating lives. They are genuinely unable to move past it, as innocuous as its cases may be. By many women’s explanation, the ick is practically a curse, a virus, something thrust upon us and beyond our control: “There is no cure, there is no remedy for the ick. Once I get the ick, it’s done for you. I don’t even see you anymore, I see the ick,” one TikTok from March describes. In another, a woman describes how she got the ick when a man picked her up for a date and couldn’t get his car alarm to shut off for five minutes. They never spoke again.
It’d be natural for men to hear about these situations and feel, at very least, frustrated. Men, notably, are not talking about women with the same sort of language — theirs is probably worse. While the ick would seem to provide clarity to why a woman suddenly stops liking you, it largely only illuminates an even more complicated path of how we expect men to be by process of elimination. Crucially, when most talk of the ick, they are unable to even identify why something gave them the ick. We’re applying scrutiny to a person and presenting it as unimpeachable, the result of a natural, unquestionable instinct. And with this sort of thinking prescribed to the ick, we tell ourselves we have no choice but to move on to the next person, who will inevitably give us the ick in some other form. We’re able to list off dozens of traits we dislike, but I’m unsure most are any closer to identifying what they truly want from a partner. I’m unsure we’re any closer to identifying what we want for ourselves.
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One caveat to all this is that much of the use of the term is either humorous or not even reflective of reality. Yes, real instances of it halting relationships exist widely, but reading too far in to social media posts of women sharing their lists of icks (something I have also done, just for the fun of participating and having a laugh. Women love making lists and jokes!) likely won’t tell us much, either. There would be absolutely no utility in a man looking at a list of icks and trying to shape himself accordingly. As dating apps highlight, there is a wide gap between what we think we want and what we might actually like. That someone doesn’t check all our boxes on their profiles doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be attracted to them were we to meet in real life. Defining our icks may feel like a practice in getting us closer to the truth of attraction, but it likely only separates us from the opportunity to let our desires be organically revealed.
I’ve long found both our use and interpretation of phrases like “red flag” to be oversimplified. I wrote years ago how we’d inflated the meaning of red flags: they are signs to give us pause, potentially indicative of worse behavior, but not always themselves some criminal offense. We all have red flags, though they vary in degrees of severity. We all, similarly, will display behaviors that give someone, somewhere the ick.
I’m not at all saying that we should just ignore red flags, or even ignore icks. We should acknowledge and trust our own feelings. But perhaps we should also step away from the language trend of it all to better assess the weight of these red flags and icks. As “ick” has entered the lexicon, all these terms have further blended together, often losing their sense of meaning in the process. Icks have come to refer to everything from someone’s emoji usage to full-on abusive behavior. Maybe someone not texting you often enough is a red flag, maybe the way their new shoes squeaked on the restaurant floor gave you the ick, but all of that is different, from, say, a man yelling at you when he’s angry or calling you a bitch — two things I have seen referred to as icks. Those are beyond red flags, and yet some people refer to them by the same name they would a minor annoyance.
Maybe this is why so many people are quick to immediately cut off a person who has given them the ick to these much lesser degrees. It feels justifiable when some of the other things we’ve labelled icks are of such consequence. What we need is to all take the ick — again, actual icks and not warning signs of abuse — a bit less seriously, both as givers and receivers of the phenomenon.
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“I used to suffer chronically from the ick,” TikToker chelseaj0rdan said in a February video. “Any time I had a crush on someone, within a few hours of acknowledging that crush, I would get the ick. When I started liking someone and they showed an interest in me, I would get the ick. Riddle me that. My friend once told me the 20/80 rule, which is essentially where if a person is 80 percent everything you want them to be and 20 percent not, that’s most likely the best you’re gonna get. When she told me that I was like ‘He’s definitely more than 80 percent what I want, and it’s just the ick, my defense mechanism of me being terrified to be vulnerable with another person that is preventing me from just falling into this.’ The ick is not real, ladies. It is something that you are subconsciously choosing to do.”
The ick has become another emotional barrier. In a time when our dating pool feels (but not is) unlimited, we’re looking for any reason to drop a connection in search of what we hope will be something better. We’re defining and categorizing away the possibility for deeper emotion.
Given that volatile nature of desire, there will always be times when the ick can’t be overlooked. You saw him try to get the waiter’s attention and be ignored, and now the lust is gone. It happens. But perhaps we’d be better off allowing some of that volatility and neuroticism to exist without definition. Let the ick wash over you.
Reminds me of 'the pock on the nose' from A Lover's Discourse