This retrospective analysis explores the link between American and Chinese participants' (task-related, relational, and back channel response) utterances during a conversation about a fictional crime story and the moment-by-moment feelings and reactions they afterwards reported. The amount of back channel responses and task-linked utterances advanced by the partners matched participants' ensuing self-reported degree of comprehension, engagement, and negative emotions during their conversations. These findings add to the grasp of how communication problems may appear throughout dyadic conversations, in particular in intercultural interactions.