Every human interaction is a triple story. There is your story, the narratives and inner dialogue in your head. Then there is the other person's story, always unique to them. Both stories do not exist in a vacuum, they are influencing each other and are influenced by the context in which the interaction takes place. The third story is what emerges moment by moment through the interplay of your story & their story. Depending on the degree of your meta-cognition some parts of your story are beyond your own awareness. Yet, they shape how you make sense of the world & your decisions. That is true for the other person too.
Each of you experiences the same interaction from the vantage point of your own story. And too often that story is being limited by cognitive biases and by what I call Fictional Narratives Appearing Real (F.N.A.R.). We cannot observe without influencing the events and people we observe. Hence, our own story co-creates the third story that we often mistakenly assume we're objectively perceiving. Steering the interaction towards a better third story comes from better understanding the other person's story and debugging our own story. After that its a matter of wisely adapting to the factors that shape the interplay of both. And better third stories are the fertile soil for cultivating better relationships, the foundation for effective communication.