@OP - welcome. Your postings here seem very sincere, its quite humbling to see how much you are trying and struggling to make this work and things are still not working. When you relay the commends made by your "sub" it strikes me that something more fundamental is at issue with your man (or the relationship between you). Seems more like a relationship in trouble than anything to do with D/s. The "lifestyle" stuff is fun and can bring you closer together, but needs to be build on very solid foundations of trust, respect, and good communication. It feels like some of those may be missing in your case. My advice would be to put the sub stuff "on hold" for a while so that you figure that out. Then layer the D/s on top. Is the D/s stuff a necessary lifestyle that both or one of you need? Or a game/pursuit that you enjoy? If its more like the latter and you have full and busy lives, perhaps you could restrict the D/s stuff to one night per week and/or weekends. You can always scale up gradually if both of you are enjoying it. -droog