A friend complained to me in the chat that she sometimes suddenly feels particularly disgusted with her boyfriend recently. Things that seemed harmless before have become unbearable pain points for her:
For example, every time you finish eating, you will not clean up the table immediately, but play games for a few hours and start to clean up the dishes before going to bed; When you brush your teeth and wash your face, you often leave water all around the washbasin, and sometimes it even flows to the ground
This occasional “fit” of disgust made her feel strange. Obviously, she didn’t think it was a problem before. Why do she care so much now? In fact, this intermittent aversion to partners is not rare in intimate relationships.
Previously, under a trend topic named # ick on TikTok, many people said they had similar experiences. For example, when we dance together, his bad dance steps are annoying, I feel sick when I see his extraordinarily luxuriant body hair, and I feel glib when he talks to me about love
A female guest on the British dating reality show Love Island used the word “the ick” for the first time to describe her disgust with her partner in her dating experience. “The ick” refers to the sudden aversion to a partner in a potential or current intimate relationship. Some people also call this situation Sudden Repulsion Syndrome.
As the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When you love someone, you should feel that they are good everywhere. If you have “aversion” to your partner, does that mean you don’t like this person? What is this intermittent aversion really about? Let’s talk today.
When we don’t like a person, it’s easy to feel that the other person is not happy anywhere, but in fact, in addition to not loving, the following four types of reasons also make us intermittently dislike our partner:
- Many people will not think that the intermittent aversion to your partner may be because you hate yourself.
Self loathing people always feel that they are not good enough, that they do not deserve to be loved and that they do not deserve a good relationship.
Ta people feel that their true selves are unbearable and annoying. Even if someone expresses a good opinion and praise to them, it is also because the other party does not see their “true face”. As long as they understand what their true selves are, the other party will feel cheated and abandon themselves.
Therefore, they will take the initiative to take some “actions” and take the lead in “cutting off” the possibility that this relationship will continue to develop. One kind of “operation” is that they will artificially set some obstacles in this intimate relationship, such as subjectively predicting the future of the partner and the relationship badly (Peel et al., 2019), or feeling that the partner’s normal behavior is disgusting. This type of “operation” can be called self handicapping
Suppose that one day they break up with their partner, they can also tell themselves that it is the point that the other party hates them (although this may be the “barrier” they set), which makes them unable to go on with the other party, rather than the other party hates them.
Unfortunately, once the idea of hating a partner appears, it may be difficult to get rid of it for a period of time, because they reduce their fear of being abandoned by hating a partner, and think they can control the harm caused by the other party.
- The unresolved trauma in the past affects your current relationship with your partner.
Dr. Jenn Mann pointed out that nausea is a common symptom of psychological trauma. Sometimes, the smell of a person will remind you of an uneasy memory, a sentence of ta will remind you of a traumatic event in the past, or having sex with ta will remind you of painful experiences in the past… Many times, you don’t even realize that this recall is happening, but you instinctively feel that you should “run fast”.
This type of intermittent aversion is not about the “annoying” person in front of you, but about your past traumatic experiences that have not been resolved.
- You vent other negative emotions in your life on your dislike of your partner.
The biological clock is chaotic due to serious overtime and irregular life. Recently, the work pressure is too high… There seems to be no good thing in your life. These negative emotions are piled up in your mind, and you have transferred them to your dislike of your partner intentionally or unintentionally.
- There are some contradictions in your relationship that have not been completely resolved.
Most of the time, those contradictions that you think are turned over, in fact, in your subconscious, there is no past.
For example, in a quarrel, he slandered you with his words; Maybe it was that ta had spiritual infidelity, and you chose to keep silent and let it “pass”; Maybe it was the first time I took him to see your parents, and he showed disrespect to your parents
If those moments that make you embarrassed are “tolerated” by you at the moment; If those bad words were directed against you, you could convince yourself that “ta is just kidding” in the context of giggling.
These cumulative injuries, whether physical or emotional, will become red lines full of crisis in this relationship. In the end, it will become a moment when you are mad at him.
If the above reasons do not match, then there is a last possibility that you are not suitable.
Many people will face various pressures in their life, such as being urged to marry by their parents and relatives, having a partner of their age and looking like they are going to die alone, and having no one to rely on when working in a different place alone… These pressures may prompt a person to start a relationship in a hurry, ignoring the difficulties in coordination in the relationship.
Intermittent aversion is caused by the incompatibility between those who have been “shielded” by you.
Finally, never underestimate our brains. Most of the time, when we fall in love, we feel everything is fine. These intermittent aversions to our partners may be the self protective mechanism in your subconscious mind. It 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 pointed out that, “When the thoughts of fear and criticism circulate in our brain, the brain will release stress hormones, such as cortisol. This is because our brain can’t distinguish reality from imagination, and we don’t know what really happened and what is just our illusion. Therefore, our survival response overwhelms our logic, so we keep alert. We tell ourselves that the other party will hurt me, so I hate ta.”
First of all, we want to tell you who are suffering from intermittent dislike of your partner and are reading articles: Don’t feel guilty because you have this uncontrollable dislike of your partner.
As mentioned above, the generation of intermittent aversion partners is mostly traceable. Find out the cause of intermittent aversion, and then think about the corresponding countermeasures. Believe that the problem can be solved.
Here, we provide you with three steps and corresponding suggestions for locating problems, which may help you out of the problem of intermittent aversion:
First, you should carefully consider whether your intermittent dislike of the other party is due to the irreconcilable differences and differences between you in principle. For example, you are a pure vegetarian, while ta is a meat lover of “no meat, no pleasure”; You resolutely refuse to have premarital sex, while ta can’t wait to have sex with you.
If there is such a difference in personality or three viewpoints between you, it is likely to be a double torture to yourself and the other party. Perhaps separation is a better choice.
Second, if you think carefully and confirm that there is not a complete “incompatibility” between you, but that there are some “knots” in your relationship that you do not realize need to be resolved. Then the best way to eliminate intermittent aversion is to be aware of and handle the hidden contradictions in the relationship.
Try to ask yourself, “Are there any unresolved contradictions before us?” “Are those things that I think are ‘past’ really heartless now?”
If there is any “long-standing” contradiction, it is obviously necessary to communicate with your partner. However, it is not difficult to imagine that if you confess your disgust directly 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 circuitous way to talk with the other party about whether they have any dissatisfaction with each other recently, and talk about the experience that makes you bitter, and confess your embarrassment and discomfort at that time.
Third, if your aversion to ta is not the above two situations, but you are a little tired of the relationship, you can try to give the relationship a holiday, in other words, you can spend some time away from each other temporarily.
Spend 3-5 days a week alone or with friends. In this way, your thoughts of each other may help to rebuild your relationship on the days when you haven’t met. After a period of time like this, you can go out on a date like you did in the original love affair. At this time, you may re focus on the things that made you choose to stay with him.
Finally, after the above thinking, if your dislike of ta is not in the above three situations and you still love this person, you can calm down and ask yourself a few questions:
Am I not confident? Is it because I’m afraid that he will leave me first that I hate him?
Does this behavior bring me back to some previous experience? What makes me sick, is it actually something that happened before?
Have I been under too much pressure at work recently, or haven’t eaten well and slept well, so I’m in a bad mood?
The sense of disgust caused by one’s own problems still needs to be solved by oneself. For example, if you have transferred your negative emotions to your partner because of the recent high pressure, you need to find some reasonable ways to “vent” your negative emotions. Don’t let the pressure of life affect your relationship with your partner.
If you are disgusted with your partner because you are not confident and disgusted with yourself, you need to learn to “reconcile with yourself” and really love yourself (it is difficult to love yourself, see this article: How to get out of the dilemma of self disgust). This is not an easy thing, but it is the core of our healthy intimate relationship.
Finally, if you find that the aversion is because ta has aroused your past trauma, you can seek professional help. It is not worth letting the bad experiences of the past affect the happiness of the present.
