Tea at Trianon: Before You Correct Your Partner

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Before You Correct Your Partner

From The Candidly:

We spend countless hours a day with the same person. And if we have to see them load the dishwasher KNIVES UP one more time we will spontaneously combust. It almost doesn’t matter that they’re actually loading the dishwasher in a way they feel is right, because so much of our criticism stems from the fact that they’re just not doing it the way we would do it.
And so we pick at them. We correct their driving when they tailgate. We gasp in disgust when we notice they left the back door unlocked overnight even after they told us they checked all the doors before bed. We belittle their insane, hormone-riddled choice of deli meat they present to us after “helping” with grocery shopping.
But. We’re doing it wrong. And so, as with all things relationship-adjacent, we asked The Gottman Institute how to do it right. And they told us that the key to correcting our partners, is to connect with them first: connect before you correct. Isn’t that a great phrase? Easy to remember. Straight-forward. But it’s the execution where things get tough. (Read more.)