When your partner is miserable, it’s not uncommon for their misery to start rubbing off on you too.

As humans, we tend to take on the emotions of the people around us. Researchers refer to this phenomenon of “catching” someone else’s feelings as “emotional contagion.” It happens because we unconsciously imitate the other person’s body language or facial expressions. Then, “through a variety of physiological and neurological processes, we actually feel the emotions we mimicked — and then act on them,” Wharton School management professor Sigal Barsade wrote for the Harvard Business Review.

So, for example, seeing someone scowl causes you to scowl. And then because you scowled, you start feeling irritated, too.

Read the full article over at the Huffington Post: How To Stay Positive When Your Partner Is Being Negative | HuffPost UK Life (huffingtonpost.co.uk)