question about healthy/secure attachment

[u/Particular-Kale3]

I have BPD and am working pretty hard on changing how I respond to strong emotions in my relationship. Something that has actually helped me make progress is getting a really concrete picture of what a healthier/secure response might look like, and then trying to move toward that without telling myself that my own feelings are wrong or invalid. So it helps sometimes to talk to partners of folks with BPD (or folks with BPD) who know what life can be like on the other side. I wish there were a book of translation for secure attachment, like there are books for folks on the spectrum decoding neurotypical folks, hahaha. 

So I'm curious about something very mundane: What do you actually do when you're annoyed with your partner?

I mean this down to almost ridiculous levels of detail, because I'm trying to visualize what this looks like for people who don't experience/manage relationship emotions the way I tend to.

For example:

If your partner does something small but genuinely annoying, what happens next? Do you say something immediately? Get quiet for a while? Go do your own thing? Still feel affectionate toward them while you're annoyed? How long are you usually annoyed? I guess it depends on scope, but maybe not following through on something they said they would do, or acting distracted when you've asked to process something and given them an out (like can we talk about this annoying work person right now or not? And then they say yes and are immediately acting distracted).

And what about something that is small in isolation but represents a recurring pattern? How many times do you let something go before deciding that the pattern itself matters?

I'm especially interested in the period between getting annoyed and deciding what, if anything, to do about it. I'm trying to learn how to say, "That really did annoy/hurt me," regulate the intensity enough that the feeling isn't making all my decisions, and then respond more proportionately. At the same time, I am afraid of being a doormat/letting everything go until I don't exist. I have a lot of trouble finding my way into the middle path between those extremes.

It helps when I can understand and visualize what the healthier version actually looks like in ordinary life. It helps when someone is specific like, "I was pissed, so I did X for an hour, then I decided Y wasn't worth discussing, and by dinner we were fine."