A harsh critic

Last night I found the motivation to write a short story from the July flash fiction section of Absolute Write.  The prompt had to do with hearing a voice from the past within a crowd.  Anyway, I wrote my flash fiction story, just shy of a thousand words.  I was pretty happy with it.  It's the first piece of writing that I have 'finished' in god knows how long, so I thought, "I have to show this off!"  I implored my wife to take a look at tell me what she thought.  Now, I should preface this with the fact that she is a secondary school English teacher much like I am, and had just finished a bout of essay correction.  At first, she was relieved to read something that she could sink her teeth into, but still had her critic's hat on.  She pointed out a few little holes in the story, which I banged together in just under an hour.  I realised that I need to do this a LOT more often; get more used to constructive criticism - something I give all day at school, but am not that used to getting. 

So readers (if you are out there), who is someone you go to to get some critical feedback, even if you know it's not exactly what you want to hear?  Who is someone nearby and trustworthy that tells you, "Uh, that part kinda sucks, but this part over here... nice!"

Back to it,
Luke