Читать книгу The Interpersonal Communication Playbook - Teri Kwal Gamble - Страница 41

Interpersonal communication involves understanding patterns of behavior, predicting what others will do and say, and providing reasons for their actions, as well as our own.¹³ Thus, understanding an individual’s patterns of behavior, not just a single behavior, provides the basis for understanding the person’s interpersonal communication. In other words, a single isolated behavior is not what we need to focus on; rather, we must take into account entire behavioral sequences.

Interpersonal communication involves not only interpreting but also predicting and accounting for another person’s behavior. If we are able to distinguish individuals from a general group, then we recognize their uniqueness and are able to know and understand them. For example, were we to date a number of different people yet not distinguish one date from another, we would not be very effective interpersonal communicators. To the extent that we can predict the behavior of a specific romantic interest, and account for that behavior—what we term reasoned sense making—we can understand that individual more than we might understand others.

We also reason retrospectively. Retrospective sense making means making sense of our own behavior once it has occurred. We interpret our own actions in light of the goals we have or have not attained. We look back on interactions and continually redefine our relationships, which is our way of making sense of them. As our interactions with another person progress, the events of our relationship increase in number, and as a result, the relationship and how we feel about it changes.