This chapter argues that emotions are a way of practicing community, that feeling rules delineate the boundaries of what is acceptable and who can be part of the communities imagined within medieval romance. Attentiveness to the diction of emotions offers a new and potentially rich avenue of inquiry into how courtly readers imagined connection. Emotion words function like a contract between people: they negotiate, enact, and destroy relationships. And in romance, these utterances most frequently misfire, sowing confusion, misunderstanding, and, most of all, despair among the lovers and knights who are propelled to repair the damage of these misperformances to their relationships. Emotional misfirings – the moments where love fails, or where shame, anger, and grief take over – are the very building blocks through which romance negotiates and narrates elite communities.