Boyfriend and I had our very first fight a few days ago.  Hardly a fight really.  A tiff.  He startled me, then teased me about it.  I got mad and a little bit shrill.  He was taken aback.  Basic two-people-interacting stuff. 

This was pretty significant for me, though, for a couple of reasons.  For one, I am pretty sure it was my first real relationship fight.  My first boyfriend only ever was with the me that was too occupied with food obsession to be mentally present, and it's hard to fight when you're not really engaged with your own life at all.

Second, it led to a talk about me and how my brain works.  See, right after we settled our little fight, I needed to quell the part of me that was screaming that I screwed up and nobody would ever love me and I was BAD because I'd gotten angry.  Boyfriend wanted to go into a related discussion.  I stopped him and asked if we could table the serious discussion until I processed some things.  This was only moderately successful because then I had to explain why I needed time (Boyfriend liked to get to the heart of things as they happen, which I admire, but was not capable of) which wound up being a serious discussion itself, but less draining than the other one would have been.

Fun fact, I cry when I'm overwrought.  And since outside of my own head there was nothing particularly upsetting going on, Boyfriend was understandably confused.  He took it all like a champ, though.  He didn't say anything stupid like "don't cry" and he took my word for it when I explained my needs and that everything was long-run fine but short-term overwhelming.

All of this led to a talk the next day which covered a lot of things, how ED's work, how long I'd been affected, how it affected my previous relationship and so on.  I learned that I'm getting better at speaking out loud about these things, even if they're about me in particular and not just general ED facts (that has been a problem for me in the past, being able to discuss ED's in a generic way, but not able to articulate my own experience).  I also learned that I like the kind of questions Boyfriend asks, and that he does, in fact, ask them at all.  So many people are afraid to pry, but I crave their interest.  After all my ED and recovery are a part of who I am and that part gets routinely avoided.  So it filled a need to be grilled gently for a while.

The less emotionally able parts of me want to be able to just tick "fight" off the list of Relationship Things and never come back to it.  But Boyfriend can be as infuriating as he is adorable, so I doubt that's going to happen, and it wouldn't be a good thing if it did happen, anyway.  But hey, maybe a few more fights and I'll start getting more comfortable with expressing my anger and learn to do so effectively and appropriately.