u/Beneficial_Tailor810

long-time member of this subreddit, just looking to have a bit of a reality check, and some outside perspectives.

My boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for around 8 months, but have been seeing each other for nearly a year. However, I have observed that we are struggling right now to keep tihngs healthy between us. To start, he is older than me, yet I would consider myself more emotionally sharp and evolved than he is. In times of stress, or new situations, or just particularly eventful points, I regularly check in with myself to regulate and monitor my feelings, to try and not misinterpret things around me, like a partner, and better understand people's actions, my own reactions, and learn about what it is I need or like or am. Granted, I do have larger incentives to do that, I'm a sensitive introvert, with neurodivergency, and potentially a form of depression. As far as I can tell, he is a neurotic, somewhat blunt, extroverted Type A person, with a very emotionally vulnerable, caring side, which he keeps very guarded from most people.

This self-checking, self-regulating is a newer skill to me which I adopted to combat people-pleasing, and habitual self-destruction via an absence of kindness i coul show to myself. I am... unsure to what extent my boyfriend consciously does this with other people or me. But I definitely wouldn't describe him as a compulsive people-pleaser (or a standard one).

As per our dynamic, it mostly revolves around restrictions placed on me, to "protect me" and makeme feel monitored and cared for. This comes with rles of "don't watch pornography", location-tracking software, browser history tracking (highly irregularly, which I am a little sad about), rules about not doing dangerous things, or going to him for help with stuff. it is meant to inantilize me and deprive me of feeling powerful, even if I am relatively unencumbered by any routine behaviour or daily asks/restrictions. I asked for these things in particular because I wanted to feel cared for in a nearly overwhelming way. I truly desired that.

And I have just been feeling really dissatisfied lately with how we are meeting/showing up for each other. It got so bad, with our constant fighting, and some very frustrating and dumbass behaviour from him, that I put our relationship on pause so I could focus on my finals weeks for the Semester, and just get a bit of distance from all of the upset with him.

Now, my issues with him are kink-related, not only because we met in a kink environment and regularly engage with it, but also because I fear that the present emotional issues we have are both halting our natural dynamic energy and causing it to malform, as well. I am questioning how safe it is to hand over control to him, and what he is looking to gain from it when I give it up, at all. I like to think of him as my established dom, but how our dynamic manifests seems to be so inconsistent that even when my day collar (which I wore every day, for 5 months, with only two temporary supervised removals) broke off from a mechanical issue, he wasn't rushing to reattach it, and after the initial 2 weeks of it off, I didn't even feel a need to do anything.
this doesn't feel like how I think it should, and I don't understand what i am meant to do now.

I understand that our issues right now are much more about us than they are about our kink identities, but I want people from these subreddits to engage. I want kink-informed, power-differentiating, and actively pleasure-satisfying ethical people (like I know this subreddit contains) answering my concerns and questions. I rely on the philosophies of kink as a way of living for guidance and identity.

I struggle to understand how we can move forward, if we can move forward at all, or if all of these things are the true instability and lack of sustainability our relationship has surfacing, post-honeymoon phase.

I am wondering where exactly we can go, from where we lie now.

long-time member of this subreddit, just looking to have a bit of a reality check, and some outside perspectives.

My boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for around 8 months, but have been seeing each other for nearly a year. However, I have observed that we are struggling right now to keep tihngs healthy between us. To start, he is older than me, yet I would consider myself more emotionally sharp and evolved than he is. In times of stress, or new situations, or just particularly eventful points, I regularly check in with myself to regulate and monitor my feelings, to try and not misinterpret things around me, like a partner, and better understand people's actions, my own reactions, and learn about what it is I need or like or am. Granted, I do have larger incentives to do that, I'm a sensitive introvert, with neurodivergency, and potentially a form of depression. As far as I can tell, he is a neurotic, somewhat blunt, extroverted Type A person, with a very emotionally vulnerable, caring side, which he keeps very guarded from most people.

This self-checking, self-regulating is a newer skill to me which I adopted to combat people-pleasing, and habitual self-destruction via an absence of kindness i coul show to myself. I am... unsure to what extent my boyfriend consciously does this with other people or me. But I definitely wouldn't describe him as a compulsive people-pleaser (or a standard one).

As per our dynamic, it mostly revolves around restrictions placed on me, to "protect me" and makeme feel monitored and cared for. This comes with rles of "don't watch pornography", location-tracking software, browser history tracking (highly irregularly, which I am a little sad about), rules about not doing dangerous things, or going to him for help with stuff. it is meant to inantilize me and deprive me of feeling powerful, even if I am relatively unencumbered by any routine behaviour or daily asks/restrictions. I asked for these things in particular because I wanted to feel cared for in a nearly overwhelming way. I truly desired that.

And I have just been feeling really dissatisfied lately with how we are meeting/showing up for each other. It got so bad, with our constant fighting, and some very frustrating and dumbass behaviour from him, that I put our relationship on pause so I could focus on my finals weeks for the Semester, and just get a bit of distance from all of the upset with him.

Now, my issues with him are kink-related, not only because we met in a kink environment and regularly engage with it, but also because I fear that the present emotional issues we have are both halting our natural dynamic energy and causing it to malform, as well. I am questioning how safe it is to hand over control to him, and what he is looking to gain from it when I give it up, at all. I like to think of him as my established dom, but how our dynamic manifests seems to be so inconsistent that even when my day collar (which I wore every day, for 5 months, with only two temporary supervised removals) broke off from a mechanical issue, he wasn't rushing to reattach it, and after the initial 2 weeks of it off, I didn't even feel a need to do anything.
this doesn't feel like how I think it should, and I don't understand what i am meant to do now.

I understand that our issues right now are much more about us than they are about our kink identities, but I want people from these subreddits to engage. I want kink-informed, power-differentiating, and actively pleasure-satisfying ethical people (like I know this subreddit contains) answering my concerns and questions. I rely on the philosophies of kink as a way of living for guidance and identity.

I struggle to understand how we can move forward, if we can move forward at all, or if all of these things are the true instability and lack of sustainability our relationship has surfacing, post-honeymoon phase.

I am wondering where exactly we can go, from where we lie now.