Tangled Up in Kink Lessons

I've been teaching high school for ten years now and have always prided myself on being a mentor and friend to my students. Outside of the classroom, I keep those worlds separate, but when it comes to my personal life, things got complicated recently. My partner, we'll call her Alice, has an adventurous side, but there's this one kink she’s not into, domination in educational settings. The irony didn’t escape me as I've always valued learning and respect for authority in education. Last month, on our anniversary weekend, Alice proposed a playful scenario where I would take the role of her teacher from high school, which is something we both found amusing. However, it crossed a line when she suggested that part of the fantasy involved me dominating her as a student, essentially reversing roles in an educational context. It was supposed to be light-hearted and purely role-played. But when I attempted this scenario, something felt wrong, I couldn’t help but feel like it was crossing boundaries we both agreed were off-limits. I tried to push through the discomfort for Alice's sake. We're together because she says she loves me for who I am and respects my professional life, yet here we were playing with those very boundaries that kept us both grounded in reality. When I got into character and gave what I thought was a playful lecture followed by some 'classroom discipline,' her responses weren't as enthusiastic or as consenting as they usually are. At one point, she actually asked me to stop. We ended up having a serious discussion about respect and consent outside of play. While it's frustrating because I care deeply about her desire for these types of role-play scenarios, I also have to consider my own boundaries and the professional line that I've always respected. How do I navigate this newfound tension in our relationship without losing who I am or jeopardizing what we have? It’s like walking a tightrope between fantasy and reality.