Communal relational context (or lack thereof) shapes emotional lives.

A case is made that a communal relationship context (or lack thereof) shapes people's emotional lives for three reasons. First, a person's communal partners assume some degree of non-contingent responsibility for the person's welfare. This allows the person, when with or, at times, when thinking about such partners, to drop some self-protective vigilance, appraise situations as less threatening, focus attention outward on to situations and to see those situations through the partner's eyes often enhancing the emotional impact of those situations, express emotions which convey individual vulnerabilities and, in turn, receive and accept emotion regulation from partners.