Alas, continued negging during the relationship is employed by many people in order to keep their partner from mustering the self esteem to leave them. I remember a story I read where a girl's boyfriend kept complaining that she smelled bad. Finally she confronted him right after a thorough shower and he admitted that his father had advised him to tell her she smelled bad so she'd never have the confidence to leave him, and that this was how his father had held his parents' marriage together, by systematically wrecking his mother's confidence in this way.

Intergenerational disposal required, ugh.