When I first got together with my wife he told me she was generally submissive and wanted me to take the lead in our relationship. We dabbled in some bdsm stuff for fun in the bedroom and she seemed to appreciate my confidence and the role I took around others, but once we started living together, things went pretty vanilla and it felt like she pushed away and respected me less overall. After some medical stuff, we went through a year and a half long dry spell.

When we started back up having sex again I would typically initiate with massages and the like but after a few times, she approached me and said she really wanted to start up with the power play stuff again as it's the one thing that reliably gets her in the mood. She also mentioned she wants more of that sort of thing in our every day lives as well that isn't just about sex but I honestly don't know what to do with that and it seems to bum her out. She doesn't want to just tell me things as ideas either because she says doing so ruins the effect.

We experimented with some throat fucking, light spanking, slapping, dirty talk etc in bed but I feel like whatever I do, it isn't quite enough for her and while our sex life is currently better than ever, I can tell it has just ignited her desire for more while I feel like I am already entering questionable territory.

When I do manage to bring out her submissive side (though lord knows I have no idea most of the time what actually triggers it), her entire disposition shifts and not only is she very open and fun in bed, but almost immediately she starts taking better care of herself, doing more around the house, and being more openly flirty.

When she slips out of it however, she is moody, uninterested, and snippy to the point of pretty much making me feel like she wants nothing to do with me at times. Sometimes it seems like she is being deliberately bratty/bitchy just to get a rise out of me but because of our dry spell and how our relationship changed during it, the idea of reacting dominantly puts me on edge and I feel like I always back down and then she either just gets irritated and distances herself from me or lately, on occasion, she basically tells me to dominate her which seems counterintuitive.

I know she wants me to lead, and after googling 'shit-test' because she apologized for shit testing me earlier one night after we had sex and then refused to elaborate, I eventually found myself here. Now I feel like she might just be leading me by the nose to this stuff and I am conflicted about what that actually means.

I love this woman but it goes against everything I feel like I know about relationships to treat her the way it seems like she wants. I always considered myself very confident but I feel like I am playing with fire here.

Any advice? Any ideas on adding a power dynamic into the everyday that won't make me feel like an abuser? Should I see any of her behavior here as a red flag?