8Say the Right Thing at the Right Time and Leave Unsaid the Wrong Thing at the Emotional Moment

The best time to hold your tongue is the timeyou feel you must say something or bust.

JOSH BILLINGS

Do you remember the days when you ran to grab the phone on the first ring? Your parents could hardly get you to hang up long enough to eat a meal? You clung to that curled cord as if it were an umbilical cord tying you to your friends. Their voices connected you to the outside world—conversations centered on who was dating whom, who flunked what class, who hated whose guts that week. Being grounded from the phone for an infraction of the house rules felt like a death sentence.

Then with the advent of email, romance moved online. And those emotional ...

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