@Glenn I’m agreeing that the metaphor about staying on your own side of the net doesn’t REALLY work for me, and you’ve articulated why I sense.
That said, I think when most people are arguing – fighting for rightness and to be understood – there is a primitive brain competition that arises, and if a “ground rule” is that if you are going to toss back and forth and try to score points, AT LEAST stay on your side of the net!
For me if it feels like that kind of whack-whack, competition… I need to pause.
The language and structure Susan has offered has helped, I believe, in navigating in ways that have minimized that kind of competitive defensiveness-offensiveness dynamic by speaking from what I feel, what I actually notice, and using language like “I imagine…” or “I’m guess you…” rather than asserting I know what’s true “on their side of the net.”
We can do better, I believe, in coming up with a concept that captures this. I am not quite sure what that is yet. Interesting!