ABSTRACT
The popular notion of marital therapy brings to mind images of noisy, arguing couples or those resigned to lives of quiet despair. Indeed, the marital therapist enters an emotional arena. With its absence being indifference, emotion is connection, and the patterns of emotional expression determine the quality of that connection. Yet, while emotion is key in work with couples, so too are other forms of behavior. In fact, emotion overlaps with other realms of functioning: it is the somatic girding of our behavior, it is a source of information, and it is a means of communication.
