You may recall when CBS and Warner Brothers halted production of the hit comedy Two and a Half Men after actor Charlie Sheen made many derogatory, insulting remarks about the sitcom’s creator, Chuck Lorre (Carter, 2011). Lorre’s refusal to continue the show in the aftermath of Sheen’s hostility carried a huge financial loss for all parties, but nothing seemed possible to reverse the turn of events and the show was only resumed after Sheen was replaced by Ashton Kutcher. That’s because communication is a transactional process: it involves people exchanging messages in both sender and receiver roles, and their messages are interdependent—influenced by those of their partner—and irreversible. Once a message has been sent (intentionally or not) and received, it cannot be taken back, nor can it be repeated in precisely the same way. It is an ongoing process that can be immediate (as in a real-time conversation) or delayed (as in the case of a text message exchange).

As we illustrate throughout this book, whenever you communicate with others, you influence them in some way. Equally important, you are influenced by others. What you say to a person is influenced by what he or she says to you, and vice versa. In the end, every conversation or interaction you have changes you (and the other person), even if only in some small way, as it adds to your life experiences.