The ick and the bristle
The ick and the bristle
Love Language, part 4: Hetero-dissonance
This is the fourth and final essay in a series on the way we talk about love, and how it connects to desire, monogamy, marriage, dating, heterosexuality, politics, and the family today. You can find other essays here, here, and here. The introduction is here. Thanks to everyone who has been sharing their experiences and digging in this week. It’s been so illuminating to read everyone’s stories and ideas.
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I am fascinated by the concept of “the ick.” For the uninitiated, the ick is a term that has circulated widely on TikTok to describe the feeling one has when faced with a partner or potential partner’s small, trivial, but nevertheless…. unsettling, shall we say, habits or behavior. It describes a moment of feeling profoundly disgusted/out-of-like with a person, usually to the point that it feels impossible to move forward with a relationship, and it’s usually discussed by women in the context of heterosexual relationships. Outwardly, the ick seems synonymous with a turn-off, but many claim that no, the ick is much more than that. Let’s explore.
Most of what we know about the ick comes from TikTok, but the phrase originated from the reality show Love Island. In an episode on the latest season of the show, true to form, one female contestant gets the ick suddenly, which got me thinking about what this concept actually signals.
There’s a lot of disagreement online, however, about what exactly the ick is. Content that attempts to define the term is so contradictory, the definitions so winding and expansive, it only seems to cause more confusion. For example:
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So, the ick is a “stupid” reason women pick to cut off a guy off they’re dating, but it’s also anything that could ever go wrong in a relationship or make a man appear suddenly, glaringly unattractive?
Relationship coaches and therapists online have called the ick a highly intuitive and spiritual practice. Bold! Other creators teach people how to get over the ick, insisting it’s a trauma response. Either way, the idea that the ick is actually intuition or a message from the subconscious mind is common. Creators draw on loosely Freudian language to explain that the ick is not just nitpicking, but an informed, instinctive urge to push certain people away.
Maybe. I’m mostly convinced that, in as much as we can define intuition (?!), the ick is that. But as with all things online discourse, there’s a fuzzy pseudo-psychology to it all.
And the ick is also frequently characterized by a certain dismissiveness over people’s quirks and a heightened awareness about what other people might think of their partner’s cringe idiosyncrasies.
So, I think it’s actually a phrase used to describe two kinds of feelings: a visceral reaction to some turn off of unknown origin, and the act of witnessing a partner behaving in a way that signals they might not be good or trustworthy or a fit down the line.
If it is possible to offer one definition of the ick, then, I would argue it’s a moment of cognitive dissonance between one’s attraction to a person and one’s interest in a relationship with that person— an instance when the body realizes that desire and practical concerns are not quite lining up.
But it’s just as much about women comically sorting through— and, yes, judging harshly— men. In this way, it points toward a cognitive dissonance that is becoming characteristic of heterosexuality today.
I need to think more about this, but even though the ick has been around for years, the term definitely plays into the vague, playful, vibes-only, brat feminism online today. See especially this very funny recap of going on a date with a guy who doesn’t know who Chappell Roan is:
Some online argue that the ick is something only women experience—more likely, it’s mostly women sharing about it. To be clear, men have been sharing icks about women in private and public for centuries, they just didn’t call it that. But today, women often talk about their icks as a kind of intentional protective practice, part of their armor against relationships with men. Creators even offer advice on how to stoke the ick to get over an ex.
As I was finishing this piece,
published a great essay on the “ick” lists people are making—and on how the concept shares a border with the “red flag,” but needs to be distinguished from actual warning signs of abuse.Whether the concept is used seriously or flippantly, it’s clear that naming icks is a practice loaded with gender and class antagonisms— as in the idea that men who order steaks at any temperature higher than medium are “uncultured” or the decision not date men who don’t have a metal credit card.
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The ick also reminds me of another term that’s been making the rounds online— “the bristle reaction.” A piece on the “bristle reaction” published by The New York Times last year opens with a clinical therapist observing that her clients often “complain that their partners only touched them to initiate sex. The gesture, a back rub or a playful grab, would make them flinch.”
In my own research, I have found that this reaction to a partner’s needy touch is commonly discussed among married heterosexual women who know they are expected to put out for spouses even when they don’t want to, and who feel conflict about that. The “bristle reaction,” in other words, is not unrelated to women online claiming they feel “touched out,” like their body is not their own, and like someone—a male partner or a child— is always asking something of them. It’s often a response to many years of knowing their body is wanted for use, it can definitely be a trauma response, and it usually signals a moment of uncertainty about what to do about all the feelings this kind of touch brings up.
It’s a moment of cognitive dissonance too, in other words, specifically between the “duties” women have historically felt in marriage and a contemporary understanding of enthusiastic and ongoing consent.
The “bristle reaction” has mostly been tied to long-term monogamous relationships, while the ick is a phrase used in dating culture. Both are visceral responses, however, that suggest other, more hard-to-identify feelings lurking underneath the surface.
The ick and the bristle, in this way, are my favorite type of cultural concept: a minor feeling, and an indeterminate one—usually actually many feelings that we have stuffed into one phrase, hoping to name some unifying theme and to tap into a sense of common experience.
Like feeling touched out, icks and bristles are hard to describe but widespread encounters with affect and sensation; a physical and psychological interruption of desire and connection. They are clearly confounding encounters with the self and with others.
And so, as with love, we scramble about for some language with which to contain it all.
Okay, please explain the ick and the bristle to me further!
I am no help with these terms because TikTok confounds me, as does most of modern popular culture. Sorry! Unrepentant old lady over here. But it sounds like part of the need to construct terms for both things is based in our cultural inability to hold ambiguity or ambivalence. You mean, you can like someone and also not like them AT THE SAME TIME? You can love someone and also dislike or resent some of their habitual behaviors? It's like once you've decided someone is "the One" then they cease to be another imperfect, annoying human and you have to just love everything about them. What a set-up that is.
There are red flags and signs of abuse. Women should listen to their instincts, for sure. And there are also reactivities based in trauma that should be taken to therapy. But it sounds like some of this has to do with women's needs being habitually unmet in heterosexual relationships, but instead of saying "Fuck all this mess" they are creating complicated rubrics to assess potential mates in the hopes that someday some magical guy will show up that actually meets their needs. Not to be a total cynical asshole, but good luck with that, sister.
I am not super online, but based on my experience, the ick feels a little like a chill where everything shifts and you think, “Oh no, this might not work out, despite my happiness right now. Because that comment, etc. felt like our plans or views might not align.” Or is this a red flag?
I was bothered by most of the items on the ick list from the Tik Tok creator, though. Don’t a large number of them just weed out lower income men or men from certain cultures (I’m thinking rural Midwest because that’s where I’m from)? Certain items seem neutral, but then, when the creator describes them, seem coded not just as performing masculinity, but sometimes performing upper middle class masculinity. I mean, class preferences are understandable, but then is that really what “the ick” is—a series of preferences for stereotypical masculinity in which the man protects and provides and his financial security allows for that? Likely other women have different lists, but this one seemed like a list of classed tropes that just stand in for what a man “should be.” In the end, it seemed a list that was far more about finding a specific type of person with the markers of success rather than an actual person with real quirks, and curiosities, and, yes, flaws.