This article explores the phenomenology of derailed desires: their developmental history and the ways in which the concrete symptoms of the eating-disordered patient reveal personal and interpersonal dilemmas. The authors propose that eating disorder symptoms encode a relational story that serves self-organizing and regulating functions and provides a transitional solution to what has been experienced as an untenable personal and relational bind. The multiple function of eating-disordered behaviors can simultaneously represent a repetitive, self-protective dimension, as well as an adaptive, developmental striving toward a sense of agency and connection. Two case reports discuss how the patient works toward feeling fulfilled without feeling too (dangerously) full of her self.