When a Compliment Is Meant to Hurt
Have you ever been in a position where you are getting to know someone new, and the flirty and playful banter leaves you feeling confused? Have you walked away from these situations asking yourself: “Did they intend for that joke to hurt as much as it did?” “How did they expect that joke to be received?” Maybe you felt that you were “overthinking” about something your friend said. Or have you ever found yourself thinking too much about a comment your partner made? You or your friends might have heard that phrase: “You’d be gorgeous if you lost weight.”
If you answered yes to any of these questions or are familiar with the examples, you were likely not overthinking a situation or being overly sensitive. Some remarks and words may seem like a compliment, yet you may still feel insulted. You may likely have experienced “negging”, a form of manipulation that masks hurtful and personal remarks as playful comments. It often comes up in dating and relationships, particularly when you are getting to know someone new, but it can happen in all types of relationships. When one person uses mild insults or backhanded compliments to undermine another, it is highly likely that it is negging.
Common examples of negging include:
- “You’re so attractive for…”
- “I usually don’t go for…”
- “It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
- “You’re surprisingly so good at chess.”
- “You’re typically not my type, but…”
- “You look beautiful for your age.”
Like other forms of manipulation, it can be challenging to detect negging because jabs may occur too quickly, we may give the person the benefit of the doubt, or we may view these comments as innocent jokes and brush them off. Negging, however, is different from playful banter. Negging is a form of verbal abuse with the intent of decreasing someone’s self-esteem and gaining the “upper hand.” In this mini sketch, we will explore the differences between humor and negging, how they affect us and our relationships, how to spot them, and how we can heal.
What is Negging?
You may have heard the term negging thrown around lately. This is because the term has gained a good deal of buzz in popular culture, mainly through the rise of reality TV/social media. Part of the reason negging has gotten a lot of buzz in the media is that many social media influencers and reality TV stars (for example) may glamorize or romanticize negging as clever flirting or “cat and mouse” chase. Negging is when someone makes comments that sound like compliments on the surface but subtly put the other person down.
How Negging Affects Us?
Negging can have strong and long-lasting effects and repercussions on people. Immediately after an incident with negging, we may not register a comment as harmful, but after time, we may be left with confusion, self-doubt, and anxiety.
Take this comment, for example: “Wow, pretty and funny! Attractive people typically aren’t smart enough to be funny.” After hearing a comment like this, the person on the receiving end may feel flattered, as they are described as attractive and intelligent. However, over time, the individual may question this comment, as it objectifies their appearance and questions their intelligence.
After repeated exposure to negging, our self-esteem erodes, which allows for anxiety, depression, and distrust to set in. This can trap people in repetitive cycles of harmful relationships.
How Negging Affects Relationships?
As mentioned, negging involves the deliberate undermining of one person so that the other person gains the upper hand. In doing so, negging creates a power imbalance in relationships, regardless of the relationship’s duration or seriousness, in which Person A constantly puts Person B down, leading Person B to seek validation from Person A. Because negging may happen intermittently or paired with intimacy, it may also cause instability in relationships, which individuals think that sometimes things are great and sometimes they’re not. This can create a reward system and exacerbate approval dependency and validation-seeking behaviors.
Furthermore, negging can erode trust and respect in relationships, leading to arguments and reduced relationship satisfaction. Over time, persistent negging can evolve into other forms of emotional manipulation and abuse.
Why Negging Happens?
Negging happens for different reasons. Although these reasons are varied, they may include things like:
- Acquiring or maintaining control over another person (i.e., keeping the upper hand).
- Projecting personal insecurities onto others and protecting oneself from rejection.
- Learning harmful relationship scripts early on through modeling and reinforcement.
- Failing to notice/acknowledge unintentional negging behaviors as harmful.
Regardless of the reason and whether the behavior was intentional or not, negging is a form of abuse and should never be taken lightly. However, it is essential to distinguish between negging and a harmless joke.
How to Spot Negging?
It can be challenging to spot negging behaviors for various reasons. Sometimes it happens so quickly that we fail to recognize a comment as harmful, or we don’t know the person well enough to deem them abusive. But mainly, it’s hard to spot negging behaviors because that’s how manipulation works; it causes self-doubt and makes us question everything.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself to identify negging:
- What happened? (What was said? What was the event?)
- What’s your internal reaction?
- How do you feel immediately after the comment(s) vs after some time?
- What would someone else think about the situation? Can you ask someone like a trusted friend or therapist?
- What does a respectful interaction look like to you?
How to Heal From Negging?
It can be challenging to heal from negging because negging affects our trust in others and our self-worth. However, growth and healing are possible. Here are some strategies that may work for you:
- Rebuild confidence and self-worth
- Unlearn harmful relationship patterns
- Relearn that healthy relationship dynamics involve mutual respect
- Remember that humor doesn’t have to put us down, and compliments don’t come with restrictions or stipulations
When healing from it, especially therapy and mental health practices such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), self-compassion, positive affirmations, and mindfulness can help you challenge unhelpful belief systems and rebuild your self-worth.
Takeaways:
- Negging is a subtle but harmful form of manipulation often disguised as playful banter or flirting.
- It uses backhanded compliments or mild insults to undermine self-esteem and creates power imbalances that can lead to self-doubt and anxiety.
- Although it has been normalized or romanticized in the media, negging is a form of verbal abuse that erodes trust and healthy connections.
- Learning to recognize negging can help individuals heal and foster relationships rooted in mutual respect rather than control.
References
- Green K, Kukan Z, Tully RJ (2017), “Public perceptions of ‘negging’: lowering women’s self-esteem to increase the male’s attractiveness and achieve sexual conquest”. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 9 No. 2 pp. 95–105, doi: https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-06-2016-0235
- Peplińska, M. (2025). You look great for your age, or how not to compliment someone. In J. Szczepaniak & M. Czachorowska (Eds.), Emotions across languages and media: Linguistic and cultural studies analyses (pp. 275–292). Harrassowitz Verlag. https://doi.org/10.13173/9783447123457.I
- Strauss, N. (2007). Rules of the game. Canongate Books.
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