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Curator, Writer / Crystal, Ivan
Editors / KY Creators
Some time ago, a friend complained to me in a chat that she sometimes suddenly felt particularly disgusted with her partner recently, and that things that used to seem harmless have now become points that make her unbearable:
For example, every time you finish eating, you will not clean up the table immediately, but play a game for several hours before you go to bed;
When brushing your teeth and washing your face, you often make water around the washbasin, and sometimes it even flows to the ground...
This occasional "seizure" of disgust made her feel strange, knowing that she didn't think there was anything wrong with it before, why did she mind so much now?
In fact, this intermittent dislike of partners is not uncommon in intimate relationships.
Previously, under a trend topic called #ick on TikTok, many people said they had similar experiences. For example, when dancing together, his bad dance steps are upset, I feel sick when I see his extraordinarily lush body hair, and even he feels greasy and slippery when he talks to me...
A female guest on the British dating reality show Love Island used the word "the ick" for the first time to describe situations in which she was disgusted with the other person during her dating experience. "The ick" refers to the sudden feeling of disgust towards a partner in a potential or current intimate relationship. Some also refer to this condition as Sudden Repulsion Syndrome (SRS).
As the saying goes, "the lover's eyes are out of the west", when you love someone, you should feel that the other party is good everywhere. If you have an "dislike" for your partner, does that mean you don't like the person? What is going on with this intermittent disgust? Today we will talk about it.
When we don't like a person, it is easy to feel that the other party is not pleasing to the eye, but in fact, in addition to not loving, the following four reasons will also make us have intermittent dislike for our partners:
1. Many people don't think that intermittent disgust with your partner may be because you hate yourself.
Self-loathing people will always feel that they are not good enough, that they are not worthy of love, that they do not deserve to have a good relationship (White, 2013).
Even if someone expresses good feelings and praise for themselves, it is because the other party does not see their "true face", as long as they understand what the real self is, the other party will feel deceived and then abandon themselves (White, 2011).
Therefore, they will take the initiative to take some "operations" and take the lead in "cutting off" the possibility of the continued development of this relationship. One of these "operations" is that they artificially put up some obstacles in the intimate relationship, such as subjectively anticipating their partner and the future of the relationship badly (Peel et al., 2019), or feeling that their partner's normal behavior is disgusting. This type of "operation" can be called self-handicapping.
Suppose that one day they and their partners really break up, they can also tell themselves: it is the other party that disgusts themselves (although this may be a "barrier" set by themselves), so that they can no longer go on with each other, not that the other party hates themselves.
Worse, once the idea of disgusting a partner arises, it can be difficult to get rid of for a while, because they reduce their fear of abandonment by hating their partner and thinking that they can control the harm that the other person does to themselves (Jones & Berglas, 1978).
2. Unresolved trauma from the past affects how you now spend time with your partner.
Dr. Jenn Mann points out that nausea is a common symptom of trauma. Sometimes, the smell of a person will evoke some uneasy memory, a certain sentence reminds you of a traumatic event in the past, or sex with him will remind you of a painful past experience... Many times, you don't even realize that this recall is happening, it's just that you instinctively feel that you should "run".
This type of intermittent disgust isn't really about the "nasty" person in front of you, but about your past unresolved traumatic experiences.
3. You vent other negative emotions in your life on your dislike of your partner.
Serious overtime, irregular life caused by the chaos of the biological clock, recently the work pressure is too much... There doesn't seem to be a single thing going well in life, and these negative emotions are backlogged in your heart, consciously or unconsciously, and you are transferred to your dislike of your partner.
4. There are some contradictions in your relationship that have not been completely resolved.
Many times, the contradictions that you think are turning the page are actually in your subconscious, and they have not passed.
For example, in an argument, ta verbally slandered you; maybe he once had a mental derailment, and you chose to hide it and let it "pass"; maybe he showed disrespect to your parents when he first took him to see his parents...
If those moments when you are embarrassed by ta are "endured" by you in the present; if those ta's bad words against you, in the context of hip-hop at that time, you convince yourself that "ta is just a joke".
These accumulated injuries, both physical and emotional, can become a red line full of crises lurking in the relationship. Eventually, it becomes a moment of your crazy disgust for ta.
If none of the above reasons match, then there is one last possibility – you are actually inappropriate.
Many people face various pressures in life, such as being urged to marry by parents and relatives, peers have objects and they look lonely to end up, and no one can rely on a person working in a different place... These pressures can all prompt a person to rush into a relationship and ignore the difficult places in the relationship that are difficult to reconcile.
Intermittent disgust, on the other hand, is caused by incongruity between those who have been "blocked" by you.
Finally, never underestimate our brains. Many times we fall in love and feel that everything is fine, and these intermittent dislikes of your partner are likely to be the self-protective mechanism in your subconscious that wants to remind you that the other person is not the right person to spend the rest of your life with.
In an interview with The Independent, neuroscientist Sally Sheldon noted, "When fearful, critical thoughts circulate in our brains, the brain releases stress hormones, such as cortisol. This is because our brains can't distinguish between reality and imagination, and we don't know what really happened and what is just our fantasy. So, our survival response overwhelms our logic and keeps us on our guard. We told ourselves that the other person would hurt me, so I hated ta. ”
First of all, we want to tell you who are suffering from intermittent disgust with your partner and are reading the article: Don't feel guilty about having this uncontrollable disgust for your partner.
As mentioned above, the generation of intermittent aversion to partners is mostly traceable. Find out why intermittent disgust arises, think about the corresponding countermeasures, and believe that the problem can be solved.
Here, we provide you with 3 steps to locate the problem and corresponding suggestions, which may help you get out of the problem of intermittent disgust:
The first step, you have to think carefully about, is whether your intermittent dislike of the other person is because there are indeed irreconcilable differences and differences between you in principle. For example, if you are a pure vegetarian, and he is a meat lover who is "meatless"; you firmly refuse premarital sex, and he can't wait to have sex with you, and so on.
If there is such a difference in personality or three views between you, then continuing to walk is likely to be a double torture of yourself and the other party. Perhaps, separation is a better option.
Second, if you think about it carefully, confirm that there is not a complete "incompatibility" between you, but that there are some "knots" in your relationship that you are not aware of that need to be resolved. The best way to eliminate intermittent disgust, then, is to be aware of and deal with the contradictions that have been masked in the relationship.
Try asking yourself, "Did we have any unresolved contradictions before?" "Are those things that I feel 'pasted' really okay now?"
If there is really any contradiction that has been "accumulated for a long time", communication with the partner is obviously necessary. However, it is not difficult to imagine that if you directly confess your disgust to the other party, it will not only hurt the ta, but also make it difficult to communicate in a peaceful atmosphere.
Therefore, you can try to use a roundabout way to talk to each other about whether there are any recent dissatisfactions between each other, mention the experience that made you grumble, and confess your embarrassment and discomfort at that time.
Third, if your dislike of him is not in both of the above situations, but that you are somewhat tired of the relationship, then you can try to give the relationship a vacation, in other words, you can take some time to temporarily stay away from each other.
Take 3-5 days a week to be alone or with friends, so that on days when you don't see each other, your thoughts about each other may help re-establish your relationship. After a while, you can go out on a date for another day like you did during the love period, and you may pay attention to the things that made you choose to be with him in the first place.
Finally, after the above thinking, if your dislike of the person is not the above three situations, and you still love the person, then you can calm down and ask yourself a few questions:
Am I a little unconfident? Am I disgusted with him because I'm afraid he'll leave me first?
Did this behavior pull me back to a previous experience? What makes me feel sick is actually what happened before?
Have I been stressed out lately at work, or have I not eaten well and slept well, so I am in a bad mood?
The disgust that arises from one's own problems still needs to be solved by oneself. For example, if you have transferred negative emotions to your partner because of too much pressure lately, then you need to find some reasonable way to "vent" your negative emotions and not let the pressures of life affect your relationship with your partner.
If you have developed disgust with your partner out of insecure and disgust for yourself, you need to learn to "reconcile with yourself" and truly love yourself (if you think it's so hard to love yourself, see this article: How to Get Out of the Dilemma of Self-Loathing). It's not an easy task, but it's at the heart of our ability to achieve healthy intimacy.
Finally, if you find that the feeling of disgust is because it evokes trauma in your past, you can seek help from a professional. It's not worth letting bad experiences in the past affect your happiness now.
Ky authors say:
In short, intermittent dislike of a partner does not necessarily mean parting ways.
Sometimes, this disgust can be a window into improving intimacy and even helping a relationship take it to the next level.
More importantly, it can be an opportunity for us to truly understand ourselves: whether it's a deep-seated self-loathing or an invisible wound from the past.
By taking advantage of these seemingly uncomfortable moments of disgust, we can not only heal ourselves, but also "re-establish" a warm and comfortable intimate relationship.
above.
Interaction Today: Have you ever had intermittent sexual aversion to your partner? Let's talk about it in the comments section
References：
Barr, S. (2021). What is ‘the ick’ and how does it develop? Experts give us the lowdown. Independent.
Gulla, E. (2021). What actually is "the ick" and why do we get it ?. (2021). Cosmopolitan.
Jones, E. E., & Berglas, S. (1978). Control of Attributions about the Self Through Self-handicapping Strategies: The Appeal of Alcohol and the Role of Underachievement.Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4(2), 200–206.
Mann, S. (2022). What Is 'The Ick' and Why Do We Get It? InStyle.
Peel, R., Caltabiano, N., Buckby, B., & McBain, K. (2019). Defining Romantic Self-Sabotage: A Thematic Analysis of Interviews With Practising Psychologists.Journal Of Relationships Research,10.
Peel, R. (2021). What is 'the ick'? A psychological scientist explains this TikTok trend. The Conversation.
White, M. D. (2013). Do the self-loathing see the same “self” that others do? Psychology Today.
White, M. D. (2011). Why it’s hard to love people who don't love themselves? Psychology Today.
(2021). When your partner suddenly disgusts you – Sudden Repulsion Syndrome.Cuddling.io.