What is an emotional connection?
What is an emotional attachment?
What role do these things play in a relationship?

I view an emotional connection as sort of like a link between two people that lets them communicate emotions fear, rejection, hope e.t.c. If our cognitive emotions are like data and what we speak, voice, show in things like body language, written outlets like diaries, facebook e.t.c is the signal. It is inherently impossible to relate to another human being without a basic level of emotional connection. As in any Signals processing scenario, you are always dealing with Noise, signal decoding, bandwidth and more noise as such one might not be able to communicate as intended but in any interpersonal relationship whether casual or intimate, an emotional connection is inherently present whether good or poor.

I view an emotional attachment as a link between two people. This is of course an analogy since there cannot be a physical link between two people like the popular myth of the invisible string to the heart :rolleyes: but an emotional attachment is a tie to another person that is built on maybe a reliance on somebody for things like approval,trust,intimacy,security even physical material like money, shelter e.t.c. or being relied on for these things. An emotional attachment is not an intrinsic property in a relationship. It is like a bridge that is built. This is a popular view that has been adapted in the leading psychological and ethological viewpoints with the name of the attachment theory. one of this theory's basic premise says that even though some attachments like maternal ones are easy to form, All attachments are built.

To form a relationship specifically an intimate relationships, there has to be some level of emotional connection where the two beings in question have a level of understanding on the basic personalities, needs and emotions of their partners and can communicate this info to some level. There also has to be some given emotional attachment whether it is a platonic Ineffability or just a causal sex relationship(booty call) . This is part of the reason why there is a long flirting period needed to substantiate emotional attachments in human courting. All i am saying in all this is that establishing a meaningful intimate relationship requires to tons of work and patience. Patience to be able to establish a connection with someone(cause there is tons of noise!) and patience to build an attachment, to form a reliance on your patner that is beyond the empty headed ,simplistic and hedonistic limerance that govern behaviors, cognition and emotions in many peoples relationships.