
It swirls within our bodies and flows out, whether we want it to or not, as signals to others.
It spurs our own behavior and conveys our deepest needs to others as well as their to us.
As such, emotions are vital to our love relationships. Our partners are central to our sense of safety.
How can they shelter us, be our safe harbor, if they don't know what we are afraid of and what we yearn and hunger for?
Emotion is the the music of the dance between lovers; it tells us where to put our feet, and tells our partner where we need them to put theirs.
We broadcast emotion mainly through our facial expressions and tone of voice, and we apprehend and comprehend these signals instantaneously. It take just one hundred milliseconds for our brain to register the smallest alteration in another person's face and just three hundred milliseconds more to feel in our own body what we see in that face--to monitor the change we see in each other.
Emotion is contagious; we literally "catch" each others sentiments and feel what the other person is feeling, and this is the basis of empathy.
Love Sense - Sue Johnson