A forthcoming paper in Emotion (Ruan, Reis, Clark, Hirsch & Bink, 2019) reports two studies demonstrating that perceiving you have a responsive partner (meaning a partner who understands, accepts and cares for you) prompts you to be more emotionally expressive. In a first study, a daily diary study, people reported on how responsive their romantic partner was to them on each day as well as the extent to which they expressed emotion to their partner each day. People expressed more emotion to their partners on days when they perceived that those partners were especially responsive to them. In a second, true experiment, particpants were randomly assigned to either: a) be led to feel their partner was especially responsive to them by recalling two kind things the partner had done for them recently (an easy task), b) be led to feel their partner was not especially responsive to them by being asked to recall ten kind things the partner had done for them recently (a hard task) or c) to receive no manipulation of perceived responsiveness. Those led to feel their partner was responsive were subsequently more likely to express anxiety to the partner in a note they wrote to that partner as they prepared to give a speech than were participants in the two other conditions.