'You'd Be So Pretty If You Just...' | Negging

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The sentence was always unfinished. You'd be so pretty if you just… He would stop there, with a smile, as if he had said something affectionate and was waiting for me to complete it myself. The first time, it was a Thursday in June. We were at a rooftop bar, and I had worn a yellow dress. I had spent 40 minutes on my hair. When I walked up to the table where Brennan was waiting, he looked up, and his face lit. He said, wow, and then as I sat down in the softest voice, you'd be so pretty if you just smiled with your teeth. I laughed. I thought it was a joke. I said, excuse me. He said, I am kidding. You look beautiful. And he squeezed my hand. I want you to see how well that works. I walked into that bar feeling confident, and within 10 seconds, I was aware of my own mouth. I spent the rest of the evening thinking about my teeth. I smiled with my lips closed, then open, then in some in-between way that felt like a stranger's.

I do not remember what we talked about. I only remember that I did not feel pretty, and that when he drove me home, he kissed me at the door and said, you looked perfect tonight. And I felt ridiculously grateful. This is what I would tell you now about that moment. The compliment and the insult arrived in the same breath, and my mind, which wanted very much to be liked, took the compliment and held it up as a reward and filed the insult under information. I will tell you the other ones. You'd be so pretty if you just wore your hair down. That one came on our third date. I wore my hair down for a year. You're so smart for someone who didn't go to a good school. He said it at a dinner with his friends, with a warm smile, and everyone laughed, and I laughed too. I love that you're so confident. I mean I wish I could eat like that and not worry. He said that over pizza. I put down my fork. You'd be perfect if you just relaxed. He said that when I was nervous before a work presentation, I did not relax.

I felt flawed. Each one was small. Each one could be explained. I could not, standing in front of a mirror, say what was wrong with any single sentence. If I had repeated them to my mother, she would have said, He is just teasing. And he was always teasing, always warm, always on the edge of a smile. But over months, something shifted in the way I saw myself.

I started to check, in every mirror, in the glass of every shop window. I started to hear the unfinished sentence in my own head, in his voice.

I would finish it, quietly, myself. If I just, a object I think of is a small gold necklace.

It was a gift for my thirtieth birthday, a delicate chain with a tiny pendant. I loved it. He fastened it around my neck in the restaurant. And he stood back, and he looked at me, and he said, It is lovely. It suits you. It just needs someone with a longer neck. He laughed. I laughed. And I wore that necklace for another six months. And every time I put it on, I thought about my neck. What I did not see, because it happened so slowly, was where I was putting my attention.

I used to wake up thinking about my day.

Now I woke up thinking about how I looked, what I would say, how he would react. I stopped wearing the yellow dress. I stopped wearing anything bright. I started to ask him before we went out, how do I look? And he would examine me thoughtfully and give me one small correction, always one, never none. And the moment I got it right, the moment he said, perfect, I felt a rush so strong that I would have done anything to feel it again. That was the hook. It was not the insult, it was the relief. There was one night, in the autumn, that I think of as the turning point in how far it had gone, though nothing happened that you could describe as dramatic.

We were getting ready for a friend's wedding. I had bought a dress, a deep green one, and I had been looking forward to it for weeks. I put it on, and I did my makeup, and I stood in the bedroom doorway, and I felt for about eight seconds beautiful.

Brennan looked up from the couch. He looked at me for a long time. He said, wow, I waited. He said, the color is gorgeous. He said, I just wonder whether the neckline is a little, you know, for a wedding. He said it kindly. Then he said, you could wear the navy one. The navy one is more you. I did not want the navy one. I had worn it to four events. It was the one he had picked out in March. I stood there for a moment in the doorway, and I said, okay. And I went into the bedroom, and I changed. That is the part I cannot forgive myself for, though I know I should. Not that he said it, that I changed so quickly. I did not argue. I did not even feel angry.