A great many of us draw considerable pleasure from showing somebody else where they were wrong.
It is so satisfying to say there, you are not doing that properly, let me show you how, that we fail to notice the cold and hostile look the other person is giving us.
That is bad enough with concrete physical tasks. But when we are discussing something personal — something to do with our relationship, or a general argument about the world — we are so tempted to bring the other person face to face with their error and their foolishness that a sentence may escape us along the lines of: look, you really do not understand this, let me explain something to you.
That is not a gendered phenomenon, incidentally. It is simply unpleasant condescension, and I have watched both sexes do it to each other.
And on the other hand — our survival depends on being exposed to criticism.
At every stage of our development, certainly in the first few decades, we do not know enough of the things necessary to function realistically in the world. An eight-year-old does not grasp the rationale of sensible financial conduct. An adolescent does not yet know how to conduct himself maturely in a relationship. A junior employee is a very long way from understanding how to run a department.
Whether we like it or not, at some point the world will have to bring us face to face with our mistakes.
And here is the paradox: intelligent people are eager to listen to criticism. Unintelligent people are eager to deliver it.
And since the urge to criticise somebody runs in your veins and demands satisfaction twice a week, here are some guidelines.
One. First of all — be quiet.
A situation in which you voice criticism should be a rare one. Repeat it too often and turn it into a routine, and people will comprehensively ignore your feedback.
And here comes a mathematical tip that will save your relationships: maintain a ratio of ten to one between praise and criticism. For every ten pieces of appreciation, one specific piece of criticism.
That is not a trick to make the medicine go down. It is what makes the criticism legible. A person who hears from you mostly what is wrong has no way to distinguish a serious objection from your general disposition — so they learn to discount all of it, and the one time it genuinely mattered, you had already spent it.