To think you can't get past 'the ick' im a relationship?

[Thickums]

LIGHT HEARTED Interested in other posters thoughts on 'the ick'.

For those who don't know, the 'ick' is when someone you are dating just starts to irritate you for no apparent reason.
I dont mean normal annoyances, i mean they start to make your skin crawl and their mannerisms just go through you like a knife.
It can just creep up on you without any warning and they can even tick every box and otherwise be a 10/10 partner but unfortunately even them breathing irritates the life out of you. You try to fight it, but ultimately the irritation can turn to anger and make even the best of people become snappy with rage due to 'the ick'.

Ive experienced this once. Lovely bloke, not a bad bone in his body. After about 2 years for some reason still unknown to me i suddenly got 'the ick'. Watching him eat a pot noodle would make my blood boil.. Literally give me the rage. Everything he did irritated the life out of me.
As he was so lovely i tried my hardest to make things work. Until one day i confessed to a friend who told me about 'the ick' and how once it happens it can never be undone. They will irritate you forever. No one knows the cause of the ick.. But its incurable. So i ended it. Felt nothing but relief.

So am i unreasonable to think 'the ick' is a real thing and once it happens the relationship is doomed?

Has anyone else experienced this? What is the reason behind 'the ick'? Why does it usually seem to happen with people who tick all the boxes?

I can't lie, i sometimes read posts on the relationship boards where the OP will say their partner has suddenly said they want out. Whilst everyone else is shouting 'OW' i think to myself maybe they've just got 'the ick?'

Okay, with the beds against the wall thing.....

Years ago I worked on the French / Swiss border. One summer I kept getting odd bites on my ankles and calves, really deep and wouldn't heal properly. A guy at work (local) mentioned that they looked like spider bites. I said surely, I would have noticed something leaving those bites!

He asked me a few questions - did I do x, y, z - including, did I sleep with my bed against the wall. I did. He advised me to stop as some spiders when they become active at night can crawl from the wall into the bed, seeking warmth and dark. Then if you roll they perceive you as attacking and bite.

This sounded fairly far fetched to me - I mean spiders biting in aggression, really? Sounded odd. But I took his advice and moved the bed. There was an absolute monster on the wall that my bed had been pushed against. I mean a real whopper!!

I have no idea whether that was coincidence and the guy's idea was BS. But I tell you what, that was 20y ago and I have never slept with my bed pushed against the wall since!!

Johnny

Aaaaaargh! What kind of whopper of a spider? 😱

I do get my feet bitten in the night but it's my kitten :o

Well I'm going to buck the trend here. I had four long term relationships before I met my now DH. I fancied the pants off all of them (for most of the relationship) so it would have taken an awful lot for a slightly irritating mannerism (or precise act) to give me the ick.

FWIW though, some of my DHs habits have recently made me regularly wonder how his previous GFs coped!

I imagine most men reading this will probably think ‘what’s the point?’
Clearly it was a case of blinded by lust as all these men were “gorgeous“
But we’re all human and no one is Perfect
I keep thinking of Oz in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet when he climbs on stage and belts out “I can’t be myself when I’m with you”

I don’t like a bed pushed against the wall because it means someone has to sleep on the awkward (next to the wall, difficult to get out) side.

@Fallsballs howling!!!! That is awful

Morning, everyone. We've had several nominations for this thread to be moved to Classics. We're going to shift it over there now so the ick is never lost.

This spider story will probably give me nightmares

I responded with " I don't want to see you again, please leave"

^^

My kinda girl!

were getting more adventurous in the bedroom when, as we were getting amorous, he tied my hands to the bed. And then he didn't really seem to know what to do and..... fetched some felt tips and drew a smiley face on my chest

^^

Omfg

Just remembered another one - this was when I was about 19, I was very naive and my standards at that time were very low!......

I was renting my own flat, lived alone and behind me were some woods. One morning my ex rung my buzzer, I wasn't expecting him but of course I went down to see what he wanted.

He asked me for some toilet paper! Puzzled I asked what he needed some for and he confidently and proudly explained that he had just had a number 2 in the woods!!!!

I didn't question, just gave him a roll of tissue and hurried him off. Half hour passed by and he buzzed again - he kindly returned the roll of tissue!!!

What a skank. I had a laugh with friends and dumped him the next day!

In the last year of school there was a boy I really fancied for ages. I was very shy but he seemed to like me back but he was equally shy about it too so we were just resigned to teenage flirting.

This was over 20 years ago so no mobiles for kids our age back then, in our school it wasn't common anyway.

One day he gave me a casettte and said "some boy has just given me this to give to you" and I was taken aback but duly listened to it on my Sony Walkman

It was a computer robot voice (you know how you can type in words and then get the computer to read it out loud?)

It was saying [in creepy robot man voice] "I want to tell you how I feel. I have fallen for you" and all of this other really quite romantic things which lost their romance once read aloud by a bloody computer.

I never forget it ended with "Sundayfishfinger......[pause for dramatic effect] I love you"

Now when he'd given me the tape everyone said he'd told them he made it and another friend had helped him do it but it immediately made me feel sick to my stomach!! I got on so well with him and liked him so much, but I just got the ick!

He kept on waiting for me outside my classes after that and then the things I loved before, like the smell of his Lynx Africa, utterly repulsed me, and I'm ashamed to say I took to dodging away from him in the rush outside class and avoiding him.

I look back now and think, gosh Sunday, you horrible cow, that was quite sweet really what he did. But at the time I just had to get away!!!

🤣🤣

I spent my second year at uni trying to get over being heartbroken by my first love. At the start of my third year I was feeling a bit better and starting to look about me.

I met a graduate student doing a very intellectual subject. When I first met him he was wearing a black roll neck jumper and a tweedy jacket with specs, he looked like he lived on the Left Bank and spent all his time smoking gauloises and reading Sartre.

Went out on a date but oh dear. He turned out to be very pale and skinny, with horrid bottle green briefs on like a little boy would wear. I was able to move past this in the heat of the moment. But then ...

He wouldn't get down to it with me and instead we lay there kind of fondling while I wondered what was going on.

We spent the night lying side by side then in the morning I made us tea and we sat opposite each other at my table. He put his skinny slightly sweaty hands out across the table to take mine and said "oh, wuh-wuh-wuh" with a kind of cootchy cootchy voice.

I got the total ick and had to tell him in the pub the next day that I was just not ready for a relationship at present ...

Luckily soon after that I met a strapping 6ft 2 first year rugby player from a very famous public school. He wasn't very intellectual, he was doing medicine and it was all work hard play hard with them. He used to rock up at mine when I was revising for finals, show me a good time in a vigorously enthusiastic way, leave me a croissant and coffee outside my door sometimes in the morning, and made no other demands.

Eventually he got a girlfriend but it was good while it lasted!

My stbxh gives me the ick which is why he's going to be ex. Things that I'd noticed years ago but ignored have become so huge I can't bear it. He scrapes yoghurt pots for ages after the last possible morsel must have gone, bangs his spoon into the bottom of his cereal bowl for every mouthful, keeps stirring his tea so long that I'm sure he'll go through the bottom of the mug, stamps his shoes on (never just puts them on like a normal person). I can't be around him now without wanting to cause him serious harm. Definately got the ick long time ago. Have definately split from old boyfriends, who were genuinely lovely, but there was just "something" that turned me off them.

Just thought of a general ick of mine. When you ask an adult to do something and they reply ‘yes mum’!!! Ffs!! If men say it to me, they automatically lose a lot of appeal.

My brother says he went off a girlfriend like this after she appeared in Guy and Dolls doing a horrific American accent

Regarding yogurt... I happen to think that flavoured yogurt is a very unmasculine food. (Plain Greek yogurt is ok.)

An ex used to eat a large bowl of strawberry flavored low fat yogurt with a teaspoon. He told me in a little boy's voice "so it'll last longer". Yuck. You're a grown man. If you want more yogurt, just get more yogurt. No need to "trick yourself" that you're eating more than you are.

I think I find under-eating in men really icky generally. This ex would also "puzzle together" the cheese on an open sandwich so that it covered the bread exactly, with no overlap anywhere. Just put more cheese on, FFS.

Lovely DH eats like a big, manly horse.

One guy i had really had the hots for on and off over the years. Charming, funny, smart, nature loving, super company. I thought we would finally get it together at Glasto - we were due to meet for the Radiohead big gig. When i met him in the dance tent, he was screwed on ketamine. Came staggering up to me, gurning and drooling to tell me that he had 'lost a shoe'. Indeed, he had just one on. That was the end for me. Years of possibility eliminated by the ick.

Second guy - went to give him head early on - smelly willy.

Unrecoverable.

My God.... I never realised people were so disposable these days. Maybe you could ask them not to do these things that annoy you?!?! Just a suggestion......!

I'll make sure I'm on my best behaviour from now on. Hope I don't become obsessively paranoid about my behaviour

@timetochangenameagain

You're going to end an entire marriage because he does something that you could easily ask him to stop doing????
Sounds like he's had a lucky escape

@thenightsky One ex definitely got dumped due to sudden 'ick'. He was a kind chap who didn't have a nasty bone in his body, which makes me feel really guilty actually. One morning he came downstairs and just sort of did a waddle/penguin walk towards me for a kiss. Aarrrgh!

Unbelievable. You should see what it's like to be isolated and lonely. People wouldn't be quite so disposable to you then.

Way to miss the point and wreck a thread in Classics

Unbelievable. You should see what it's like to be isolated and lonely. People wouldn't be quite so disposable to you then.

Yes, we should all force ourselves to continue to have sex with people we no longer find sexually attractive because some people somewhere are lonely.

Good advice!!

(Is your bed pushed against the wall by any chance?)

Broken2020

I bet you're a laugh at parties.