u/RunawayGore649

This is gonna be a long one, because I really just need a space to talk about how I am feeling to other doms.

TLDR: The more comfortable I get with my girlfriend/sub the less I feel like a dom.

• My girlfriend and I have been dating for a year now and I couldn't love her more. When we first started dating I had never been with anyone in a dynamic before, but she talked about dynamic frequently and excitedly, and her past relationship was a 24/7 M/S dyanmics. I tried my best to do research on what it meant to be a dom and adhere to what I thought she would want. I changed a lot in the early months we were dating and tried to become this idea of what I thought a dom was... someone who was mysterious and strong and in control of every situation. Someone who didn't show feelings and who made all the decisions. I tried to be something that I wasn't for a long time and it hurt me a lot because I could never live up to the expectations I set for myself. I always felt like I was a disappointment and it drained me.
• My girlfriend tried to reassure me that learning our own dynamic takes time and I don't have to be this specific archetype, I just need to be myself. I tried to take that into account but I just couldn't break it from my brain that I needed to be something different.
• Eventually after several months of struggle I broke down and felt like I couldn't keep going with our dynamic and my gf said that was completely okay so we took a break for a little bit.
• I eventually started finding what it meant to be a dom in my own way just by taking it slow and doing outside learning, and clearly I am still trying to learn this.
• In reality I am not this big strong mysterious presence. Im what most would say is a soft dom. I like cuddles, I like being emotional, I like being a "baby" and not having to decide every little thing. It stressed me out endlessly to create tasks for her and following through with punishments for when those tasks weren't obeyed. I like being able to be safe and relax and be myself, but it makes me feel like I am not a dom. Maybe that is the case but I have spent so long trying to be this thing that it feels so wrong to not keep trying.
• As time has progressed my girlfriend has adjusted and learned what a healthy relationship looks like and in her own words she "doesn't know what she wants out of being a sub. She just wants me and wants me to be myself. That I am the definition of a dom by being myself because I take care of her, allow her to be herself, and love her unconditionally and thats all she wants." She has also told me that she has recently noticed that when she goes home to her parents she has to make all these decisions and is constantly on her toes but when she is with me she gets to switch her brain off because she knows I will handle it. Which really shocked me because sometimes I can't always make all the decisions and I worry that when I put decision on her that I am being a bad dom, but she literally said she gets to switch her brain off when shes with me which was a nice complement.
• It makes me so incredibly proud of her, myself, and us that we are both in safe spaces to be ourselves. I do not take those accomplishments lightly. That being said she still is my sub and I am still her dom. I take responsibility of her and ownership of her. She has a day collar specially made for her with my birthstone in it. I like being her dom I just don't feel like a dom anymore.
• We both don't know what we want out of a dynamic, but we know we want one in some capacity. We both lead incredibly busy lives so its had to stay consistent with a dynamic which further burnt me out because I felt like I was putting in so much effort and was receiving nothing in return. So it is hard to give our dynamic time and space to develop when we barely have time anyway.

My hail mary here is how do I be myself when it seems so contradictory to being a dom? How do I find my dominant identity?