by Tracey Cozby

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 20, 2008

Everyone has dealt with negativity at some point in their life from parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, and bosses. In each circumstance we know how to stand our ground and speak our mind. Where most of us falter is with our significant other, the one person who is supposed to love us with our faults and imperfections. Living in a relationship where negativity abounds is sure to take its' toll on one and possibly both people.

There are a lot of people who do not view speaking to someone negatively as an abusive situation. I can say, without a doubt, that it is one of the most subtle and most damaging abuses there is. Being spoken to on a daily basis as if you were sub-human will eventually cause the loss of self esteem and self worth. My last relationship was not healthy from the moment we chose to live together. The remarks were not abrasive at first. Just little things like I needed to fix my hair a different way or I didn't make the bed the correctly.

It was only after time did the really bad comments start to come out. I was too lazy, I used too much makeup, I didn't use enough makeup, I was too fat, I was too thin, I was, I was I was. Nothing I did was right. There was a time when I dressed up for Halloween as a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. It was what he didn't say that crushed me. Negativity does not need to be in the form of words. His actions spoke louder than anything he could have ever verbalized. I spent hours doing my makeup and giving myself the Dallas big hair. I looked hot. At least I thought I did. When I walked out of the bathroom, the man I loved said to me "Are you ready?". Wow. Not the reaction I was looking for. It was from that night forward I knew our relationship was going to die and it was not going to be a peaceful death.

I am not going to sit here and pretend to be an angel and that I never said anything negative towards him. I did but once I said it, regret set in. I hated myself for it. I saw how he felt it was within his right to talk to me in the manner he did and in retaliation I shut myself down inside and lost the woman he fell in love with. It was a defense mechanism and my only way to survive the words that stung worse than when I was 7 years old and my grandmother poured corn medicine into an open wound on my young tender fingers.

I am now 4 years out of that relationship. I will look at photos of me from that time and I do not recognize that woman. Who was she? She was a woman who lost her spirit. With every degrading, be-litting and negative word spoken to her chipped slowly away at who she was until in the end she was nothing more than a shell of her former self. Do negative words cause damage to the person who is on the receiving end? Absolutely. Julia Roberts had an amazing line in Pretty Woman that sums it up perfectly. "People put you down enough, you start to believe it. The bad stuff is easier to believe"

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