Watch anyone’s face when a couple starts making out on a crowded train. You’ll usually get the eye roll or the disgusted lip snarl. Every so often, though, you catch something else. Not disgust exactly. More like somebody was just reminded of something they wish was happening to them.
People have been getting weird about other people kissing for well over a century. When Thomas Edison’s studio released an 18-second film called The Kiss in 1896, one critic complained about “the prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips” and called it absolutely disgusting. The actors mostly nuzzled and pecked. By modern standards, it’s almost aggressively tame.
Gen Z appears to have inherited some of that discomfort. A survey from dating app Hily found nearly one in three Gen Zers don’t like watching couples make out in public, compared with fewer than one in five millennials, Cosmopolitan reported. More than half said seeing a couple kiss can make them feel lonely.
Why Seeing a Couple Kiss Can Feel So Annoying When You’re Single
That part is harder to laugh off. Psychologist Jean Twenge, author of Generations, told the New York Post that Gen Z is “pulling back from romantic relationships overall,” in part because dating can feel risky when the downside is getting hurt. In the U.K., 35% of adults in a YouGov survey said they kiss romantically less than they did five years ago.
A stranger making out on a park bench can hit a sore spot if your own romantic life is currently struggling or nonexistent. “PDA is shining a light on what we don’t have in such an explicit, tangible, almost primitive way,” clinical psychologist Sabrina Romanoff told Cosmo. She also noted that people can dump their own insecurities onto a couple who is just sitting there minding their business.
And occasionally somebody takes that irritation way too far. This summer, a TikToker filmed two adults kissing on a Central Park bench while yelling at them to get a room. The clip pulled in millions of views, and internet strangers started digging through the couple’s lives, including their jobs and families. Not cool.
If watching two people kiss makes something in you clench up, so be it. Human beings are strange little animals and envy isn’t exactly breaking news. But pulling out your phone and turning two strangers into content is a different move, and it’s creepy. The couple on the bench was having a better afternoon than the guy filming them. He probably knew that too.
The post The Real Reason PDA Makes Some People Uncomfortable, According to a Psychologist appeared first on VICE.
