Please be gentle with me as I’m feeling pretty vulnerable and confused about this situation. I welcome advice but also just need a sounding board to process what I’m feeling. I recently started playing with an ENM man, my first experience doing so, and it’s relevant to note I am solo. It started out great, sex-based but we talk almost every day and know about each others’ lives. He’s gotten to know me and up front I said I need some degree of emotional connection and he reciprocated stating he needs the same. I’ve known from day one he and his wife have a no-feelings rule, so I’ve been careful to try to not be perceived as crossing any boundaries, but his frequent texting has always felt a bit intimate (but welcome as it felt good) to me. As I’ve gotten to know him more, when we are together, he talks a lot about his wife, (only favorable things), like he inserts her into every conversation, and seems to take up a lot of emotional space but I don’t feel like I have a right to the same emotional space. I haven’t yet told him but it makes me feel pretty shitty, because I am currently not partnered and it emphasizes that I don’t have what they have. It seems like our relationship is built around his needs, schedule, boundaries and I am starting to feel like a second-class citizen. I know I need to voice these concerns to him but I am in the early stages of just processing them and figuring out what is/is not serving me. Recently I’ve also been experiencing pretty intense sub drop. I feel like I can’t ask for much for fear of being misinterpreted as crossing a boundary for them. However, I did voice that I’ve been experiencing intense lows after we play that last for about a day so just asked if it’s all the same to him, to reach out if he remembers. He took note of this but later mocked my request. I was pretty caught off guard. He did end up checking in with me, but his sarcastic reaction made me feel like he doesn’t care or take my emotional needs seriously. There are other examples of this but I’ll spare you. I feel like there was a lot of “love bombing” up front and I’m only know starting to see how this situation is one sided. Over time the texting had gotten less frequent, which is probably for the best. Recently I had a pretty important life event he’s known about for months and he failed to even acknowledge this. Had we not already developed a certain level of intimacy, I wouldn’t have cared but it seemed like a big slap in the face. Even random acquaintances checked In with me during this time, so I was a hurt. I haven’t yet told him how this made me feel because I’m not sure I have the right to even feel this way. I was already questioning if this situation was serving me given how shitty the sub drop has been. And now I am feeling minimized to someone who doesn’t even deserve basic human decency, so I’m thinking of taking a step back. I do acknowledge that my issues with this situation are magnified by the fact that I don’t have emotional support in the form of a partner at home.

Are these issues common as a solo seeing someone partnered? Are my feelings valid? If I tell him I want to take a step back, im not sure it’s even worth me telling him how I feel or why. Any thoughts or advice are welcome. Sorry it was long winded.