In ick-ness and in health? Managing mild disgust in your marriage

Every night across the country, thousands of couples participate in one of the great relationship rituals: watching TV together on the lounge while absentmindedly scrolling their phones, only looking up if something piques their collective interest.

According to relationship columnists this likely means your love is dead, or at least in serious trouble, but according to most real people I know it’s just a sign of the times. We’re tired, we’ve made it through another day: please just let us stream and second-screen.

On a recent night exactly like this my wife Kate and I were watching a show about two strangers who, on paper, seem to be complete opposites. She’s a foul-mouthed podcaster and he’s a no-nonsense rabbi – it could never work! It does work, for a while at least, until the girl discovers her boyfriend wears shorts with a suit jacket, likes to put on an Italian accent when ordering food, and his hands are a bit too big.

When your long-term partner reveals a long-time ick, the only sensible thing to do is have a nervous breakdown. Credit: Fiona Bianchinotti

Basically she gets “the ick”, and things start to spiral. For those unaware, the ick is a social and cultural phenomenon that refers to the point at which your initial attraction to a person evaporates and you begin to feel repulsed, often because of a single incident.

The term has been part of the popular lexicon for a while – it popped up on an episode of Ally McBeal in 1997 and again on Sex in the City in 2003 – but it was largely popularised by the reality dating show Love Island, where everyone is getting the ick all the time.

Typically the ick occurs at the start of a relationship; a handbrake on the honeymoon phase. One minute you’re falling in love, the next, you’re avoiding their calls because, I don’t know, they think there’s a silent x in the word espresso.

Given we have been married for four years (and together for 10), I figured we were well past ick territory, and any discussion of the topic would be filed under harmless banter. As the credits rolled on our show, I asked the obvious question: “Does anything I do give you the ick?”

Sensing a danger that was not yet apparent to me, she countered with “You go first” – and so I did, explaining that her habit of adopting a rural accent when visiting her regional cousins might be classified as an ick. “I think it’s just something about how you suddenly drop your syllables,” I said. “The whole ‘G’day! How are ya?’ It makes me cringe a bit.”

To her credit, my wife barely reacted and instead hit me back without missing a beat: “I get the ick when you sneeze or cough. Your bodily noises give me the ick.” Almost immediately we both recognised she had gone too far, a crossing of the rub-ick-on if you will.

Whereas my ick was irregular – we see her country cousins twice a year – sneezing is a daily occurrence for me (often in sets of three!).

The realisation that I had been mildly repulsing her for years was not fun to process, made worse by a week with a high pollen count. Suddenly every sneeze or cough felt like a personal affront; as soon as I sensed a stirring in my sinus I would dash to another room and stifle it.

Admittedly my wife attempted damage control, saying things like “It doesn’t actually bother me that much”, but it was too late: once shared, an ick tends to stick. Rather than take her word for it, I began adding to my own list, making a mental note of each ick-worthy offence.

What to make of the copious amounts of hair left in the bathroom, the consistently incorrect use of the phrase “when in Rome” or Kate’s inability to watch a film without first reading the entire synopsis on Wikipedia. Are these minor annoyances? Yes. Could they graduate to icks? Absolutely.

After several days of holding in sneezes, Kate took it upon herself to point out that our collective icks had existed forever and we’d decided to stick it out anyway. Rather than worrying about what it meant, I should focus on what it proved: love conquers all, for better or for worse, richer or poorer, in ick-ness and in health.

Also she was worried I was going to give myself a brain aneurysm, and she’d be forced to explain that my final breath was actually a sneeze, the greatest ick of all.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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