Feeling disgusted by your partner often comes after slowly realising they are not who you thought they were. Nothing dramatic has to happen. Small moments build up until the picture you had of them no longer fits, and the body starts to pull away before you have the words for it.
This is different from the ick. The ick is a sudden turn-off, often over something small like a laugh, a habit or the way someone dresses. The disgust in this post sits deeper. It is about who the person is, how they treat people, and what they do when it counts. It can also build from carrying too much of the relationship for too long, or from one part of them that goes against what you value.
When your partner is not who you thought they were
It rarely starts with one big event. He snaps at the delivery rider and your shoulders go up. She tells a story about a colleague’s failure and seems pleased by it. During your mother’s hospital stay, he asks when you will be home because no one has sorted out dinner. Each time, there is an explanation ready. He is tired. She is under pressure at work. Everyone has bad days.
Then one ordinary evening, something small happens, and all the earlier moments line up at once. People describe it as seeing someone clearly for the first time. The body often gets there first. The stomach tightens when they walk in. A hand on the shoulder feels unwelcome. The sound of them chewing becomes hard to sit next to. Sleeping close to them feels like too much.
I describe this to people as the picture and the person. The picture is who you believed your partner was, built from the early months, from what they said about themselves, and from what you hoped for. The person is who has been there all along. Disgust tends to arrive on the day the two stop matching.
Why old memories start to feel spoiled
One of the hardest parts is what happens to the past. The holiday photos, the way they looked after you when you were sick, the early messages you kept. Once the picture breaks, those memories can start to feel fake as well.
There is research behind this. Psychologist Paul Rozin spent much of his career studying disgust. He found that it follows what he called the law of contagion. Once something is seen as dirty, anything it has touched also feels dirty, even when nothing about it has changed. In one well-known example, people would not drink juice that a sterilised cockroach had touched. Rozin and his colleagues also found that the same reaction extends from food to people who break moral rules.
In a relationship, the same thing happens to memories. A kind moment from five years ago gets judged by what you know now. It may help to know this is simply how disgust works in the mind. The good moments may have been real, even if they did not show you everything.
How much of the first picture was yours
Many people turn the disgust on themselves as well. How did I not see it. Why did I stay so long. What does that say about me.
Early in any relationship, we fill in the gaps about the other person with what we hope is there. Carl Jung called this projection, which means placing onto someone else qualities that come from inside us. Our attachment history shapes what we fill in. If you grew up having to watch a parent’s mood closely, or learned that love had to be earned, you may have become very good at seeing the best in people and holding onto it. People with anxious attachment often do this, because staying hopeful feels safer than facing the risk of losing someone.
Seeing it late usually means you trusted them for a long time. That trust came from a real place in you. It helps to look at what you needed to believe about them, and why. That makes it easier to see people clearly, including the one you are with now.
When you have become your partner’s parent
Sometimes the disgust grows from a different place. You did not discover anything new about them. You just ended up doing everything.
You remember their appointments. You deal with their family. You book the aircon servicing, sort out the insurance and tell them how to reply to their boss. They lose their keys and look at you. Over the years, you move from partner to manager, and they move from adult to someone you look after.
Psychologist Harriet Lerner calls this overfunctioning and underfunctioning. One person does more, the other does less, and each one’s habit makes the other’s easier to keep. Neither person usually chose it. The one who overfunctions often learned young that being capable kept things steady at home. If you were the responsible child in your family, this role can feel completely normal until your body starts to refuse it.
It is very hard to desire someone you have to manage. Many people who feel disgusted by their partner in this situation find it lands on small things, like the way they eat or the wet towel left on the bed. Underneath it there is usually tiredness, and the loneliness of carrying a shared life on your own. In Singapore, this pattern shows up often in couples where one partner is the high performer at work and becomes the high performer at home too. They plan the BTO, the wedding and the children’s enrichment classes, and no one notices they have nobody to lean on.
When one part of them goes against what you value
Then there is the partner who is mostly good. Kind to you, close to your parents, reliable with money, patient with the children. And there is one thing. They lie easily when it suits them. They talk down to the domestic helper. They make jokes about certain groups that make you go quiet. They are unkind to their own mother in private.
Researchers who study disgust found that the same feeling that protects us from spoiled food also rises when someone breaks a moral rule that matters to us. This is why a clash in values can feel physical, like something sour in the throat, even when you cannot fully explain it.
People often feel guilty about being disgusted by a partner who is otherwise good. So they push the feeling down and focus on everything else. It usually comes back each time the behaviour does. A useful question is whether this is a difference you can live alongside, or whether it touches something central to who you are and how you want to live.
What happens when disgust is never said
In Singapore, this is very hard to say out loud. Your families know each other. Your friends are shared. There may be a flat, a loan and children tied to the relationship. Many people learned early to put other people’s feelings ahead of their own and to keep the peace. So they keep a neutral face, stay polite, and carry on.
Disgust that is never spoken tends to grow. Couples researcher John Gottman found that contempt was the strongest predictor of divorce in his studies, ahead of criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling. Contempt is what disgust looks like once it has hardened into looking down on someone. It shows up as eye-rolling, sarcasm, or a tone that says you think less of them. Often the person feeling it does not notice it has started.
In the body, it can look like holding your breath when they come home, sleeping at the very edge of the bed, or feeling relief when they travel for work.
How therapy can help when you feel disgusted by your partner
The three kinds of disgust in this post ask for different things. When the picture breaks, there is grief for the person you thought you had. When you have become the parent, there is often room for change if both people can see the pattern and stop playing their part in it. When values clash, there needs to be an honest conversation about what each of you can live with.
In relationship counselling, part of what I do is help people work out which one they are dealing with, because it can be hard to tell from the inside. Some people come alone first, to understand their side before deciding whether to bring their partner. Others come as a couple. As a registered counsellor, I draw on attachment theory, Emotionally Focused Therapy and Gottman’s research in this work.
I also pay attention to the body. Noticing where the disgust sits, and when it rises, can help you trust what you have already seen. That does not mean the problem lives only inside you. The feeling is responding to something real in the relationship, and that needs looking at too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to feel disgusted by my partner?
Yes. Many people feel disgust toward a partner at some point, even in relationships that are mostly good. It usually points to something specific: a part of their character you did not see before, a pattern where you have become their caretaker, or behaviour that goes against your values. The feeling is a signal to understand, and on its own it does not decide whether the relationship should end.
What is the difference between the ick and feeling disgusted by my partner?
The ick is a sudden turn-off, often over something small like a habit, a phrase or how someone looks. Deeper disgust is about character: how your partner treats people, what they value and how they act when it matters. The ick can fade or come and go. Disgust about character tends to stay and grow until it is addressed.
Why do I feel like I am my partner’s parent?
This usually happens when one partner gradually takes over more of the planning, remembering and decision-making while the other does less. Psychologist Harriet Lerner calls this overfunctioning and underfunctioning. Over time the overfunctioning partner feels tired and alone, and attraction drops because it is hard to desire someone you have to manage. The pattern can change when both people see it and the overfunctioning partner stops covering for the other.
Why do I feel disgusted by my partner even though they are a good person?
A good person can still do one thing that goes against your core values, such as lying easily, being unkind to someone with less power, or speaking badly about certain groups. Research by Paul Rozin and Jonathan Haidt shows that disgust responds to moral violations as well as to spoiled food. That is why the feeling can be strong even when the rest of the relationship is good.
Can a relationship recover after you feel disgusted by your partner?
Some can. It depends on where the disgust comes from and whether both people are willing to look at it. A parent-and-child pattern can often shift with effort from both partners. A clash in values needs an honest conversation about what each person can accept. When the disgust comes from realising someone is very different from who you thought, recovery depends on whether the person you now see is someone you can build a life with.
Can couples therapy help if I feel disgusted by my partner?
Yes. Couples therapy helps both partners name what has been happening between them in plain words, including patterns like one person doing everything. Gottman’s research found that contempt is the strongest predictor of divorce, so working on disgust before it hardens into contempt makes a difference. Individual therapy is also an option if you want to understand your own side first.
If something in this article resonated and you’re wondering whether therapy might help, you can find out more about how I work and book a session on the Services and Booking page.
You might also want to read
→ Why Do I Feel So Alone in My Relationship?
→ Emotional Parentification in Singapore
→ Why Do I Keep Repeating the Same Relationship Patterns?
→ Couples Counselling and Marriage Therapy Singapore
Tags: disgusted by my partner, the ick, relationship counselling Singapore, couples counselling Singapore, attachment counselling Singapore, anxious attachment Singapore, overfunctioning in relationships, contempt in relationships, therapist Singapore
