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Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Lifestyle
Jessica Benda

INSANE: How a single sentence and a tennis metaphor can save relationships from imploding | Rare Historical Photos

If an argument were a tennis match, many of us would tear right through the net during a frenzy of back-and-forth spatting.

That’s a situation hundreds of Stanford students learned to avoid in one of the business school’s most popular electives for decades. Now the masterminds behind the course, David Bradford and Carole Robin, want everyone — not just those who can afford Stanford — to know the secret to staying on “your side of the net” during an argument.

The solution, which Bradford devised in 1969, is one simple sentence: “When you do [insert action], I feel [insert feeling].”

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