It was a moment that was so deliciously cringe, it should live forever in Love Is Blind history. After a tumultuous courtship and a slightly unhinged engagement, Brittany Wisniewski was standing behind a wall, waiting to see her new fiancé, Leo Braudy.
As the doors parted and Brittany laid eyes on her man for the first time, an almost imperceptible shadow passed over her face. Her eyes widened, just slightly, in an expression that read: “Oh.” As they embraced and Leo greedily took her in with his eyes, Brittany did nothing. She looked like a deer in the headlights. She looked a tad grossed out.
Yep, it seems Brittany got the ick. Though it was obvious from the second she saw him, she confirmed it with her immediate reaction to the cameras after they parted ways. “Oh God, what have I done?” she exclaimed. (For his part, Leo’s reaction was, “Holy fuck, she’s hot.”)
Unsurprisingly, the couple wasn’t chosen to continue their “experiment/journey” on a trip to Mexico and broke up shortly after.
She’s not the only one from season seven of Love Is Blind to get the ick. Leo’s other love interest, Hannah Jiles, also seemed to have regrets after meeting her new fiancé, Nick Dorka, and laying eyes on him for the first time.
Hannah, we learn, had expected him to look…different. In the pods, Nick described himself as an athletic former college football player, which he was. It’s just that he was a kicker, and thus has a body type that’s more Matty Healy than, say, Travis Kelce.
“What he said [about his looks], I don’t think was really truthful,” she told the cameras. “It is making me feel a little insecure because I feel like I’m bigger than him.”
Hannah, unlike Brittany, persevered despite her misgivings. But once the couple got to Mexico, Nick’s goofy behaviour started to rankle her. It came to a head when he wanted to play on a ride-along duck statue next to the resort pool, a seemingly harmless action that she vehemently told him not to do.
“It’s gonna give me the ick,” she said, deadpan. He went anyway. And sure enough, she got the ick. When Nick returned from frolicking on the ducks with a random woman — who called Hannah “jealous” — his fiancé looked positively disgusted.
“I’m literally trying to keep the passion alive, Nick,” she told him. “You riding a duck is hard for me.”
“Getting the ick” is one of those things that has been around for centuries, maybe even millenia, but now has been given an official name thanks to TikTok (see: girl dinner). KnowYourMeme describes it as “that one innocuous thing an otherwise mundane date does that immediately turns us off.”
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