Interestingly, one of its core postulates is that the essential sociality of us all, or the universal human impulse to relate to others. In so far as we are relationship-seeking beings, then, what is the connective tissue that actually binds people together, that gives effect to this relational striving? In contrast to the popular belief that knowledge precedes action, I argue that emotions are what prompt and sustain human interactions - and not emotions in the conventional sense, of private feeling states stored inside our heads, each with its own unique biochemical correlate. I regard emotions, instead, as intersubjective phenomena that can be said to exist between people. How else does one explain being moved by a piece of music, a spellbinding movie or a superb novel, if not that some mysterious element - an emotion - has connected to the heart of the composer, the director or the author to the heart of the listener, the watcher or the reader?

We expected that empathic accuracy—getting the right answer about what your partner was feeling—would correlate with a stronger sense of relationship satisfaction. This correlation was certainly there—understanding how your partner is feeling is a good thing.

But more important than that, especially for women, was the empathic effort involved. If a person felt their partner was making a good-faith effort to understand them, they felt more positively about the interaction and about the relationship, regardless of their partner’s accuracy.

To put it simply, understanding another person is great, but just trying to understand goes a long way in building connection.

Some people do this automatically, but efforts to understand others can also be deliberate, intentional behaviors. It needn’t come naturally to you at first, but the more you try, the easier it will get. The next time you have the opportunity, try asking yourself:

How is this person feeling?

What is this person thinking?

Am I missing something here?

How might I feel if I were in this person’s shoes?

And when you can, let them know that you’re curious and trying to understand—a small effort that can have an enormous impact.

We investigated the link between emotion and relationship stability in one of our earliest joint research studies. We brought couples who were married or living together into the lab and videotaped them for eight to ten minutes as they discussed a recent upsetting incident in their relationship.

These findings, along with our findings about the importance of empathic effort (discussed in Chapter 5), point to an important idea about intimate relationships: if a couple can cultivate a bedrock of affection and empathy (meaning curiosity and the willingness to listen), their bond will be more stable and enduring.

Here is where Emmy Werner’s research, our own Harvard Study research, and many other pieces of research from across cultures and populations converge to show that a critical link between childhood experience and positive adult social connections is our ability to process

emotions.

It is from our relationships as children—especially our relationships with our family—that we first learn what to expect from others. This is when we begin to develop the emotional habits, so to speak, that will be with us for the rest of our lives. These habits often define the way we connect to others and our ability to engage others in mutually supportive ways.

A crucial point here is that our ability to process emotions is malleable. In fact, managing emotions is one of the things we actually get better at as we grow old. And there is strong evidence that we don’t have to wait until late in our lives for this to happen. With the right guidance and some practice, we can learn to be better at managing our feelings at any age.