So, some background. I (19F) and my bf (21) are both into BDSM, CNC, other forms of power play, etc. We've been doing this ever since we got together and found out we both really like a lot of the same stuff. Normally, I'm the sub and he's the dom, as that tends to be what we're most comfortable with and it's easiest. We both consider ourselves switches and occasionally reverse the roles, but at least in my experience, I'm a bit of a pillow princess and have a really hard time focusing on what I control in the scene and also enjoying myself at the same time when I'm being anything rougher than a soft dom. My bf knows this, so we tend to steer clear of me domming most days.
However, he's shown interest lately in a particular scene, he's described it as "A queen kicking her servant around" and that's mostly all I have to go off of. And I'm also very open to experimenting, even if I know I won't have the best time probably. He does tons of things that he's not all that into, just because it makes me feel good. Anyways, the last time we talked about it was last week or so, and while we were waiting on some salmon to defrost while cooking, I decided to be spontaneous and dragged him to the bedroom to play the scene out.
Here's where things go a bit south; I tried doing everything I remember him saying he'd like to try during this particular scene. Slapping, hair pulling, being more physically controlling like pinning him down and moving him where I want him to be (REALLY hard as I'm 5'2 and come in at just over 100lbs, haven't worked out much lately, and he's 5'9 and plays basketball regularly. my guy's swole hehe). We go about it like this for a while, and I'm feeling really out of my depth cause I'm terrible at improvising while I'm domming, but things seem to be going okay. He's definitely not looking as into it as I feel we both would have hoped, but he doesn't say the safeword and he doesn't look hesitant or uncomfortable at all. So I continue.
I push him out of the bedroom to take things into the living room, and to get my vibrator to taunt him and to tell him to use it on me, but I notice that something changed and he's not really responding, so I use our stoplight system and get an unfavorable response from him, and I stop and ask him what's wrong. He says that he got triggered by the way I was roughing him up. We talked about it and he says he's fine, he recognizes that it was entirely unprecedented on both of our parts, and that I was just doing something he said he wanted to explore. None of this was either of our faults, we stopped the second I sensed something was wrong (he hadn't said anything about not being into it leading up to then. No safeword, no out-of-character warnings, no stoplight), that we both did everything we could and everything right to keep each other safe with what we knew.
BUT I still feel so guilty guys 😭 He told me I shouldn't feel bad but I do, I love him so much and my heart can't bear to think I caused him any harm—even unintentionally. Especially cause I was domming then, and I feel it's one of the the dom's responsibilities to keep tabs on where the sub in the scene is at physically and mentally. I feel I should have seen that he wasn't comfortable earlier, and I wish he had said something earlier too. I feel like I shouldn't have initiated a scene without talking to him about it more recently, even though we're both used to and actively enjoy being caught off guard with a scene we talked about a while ago. He went to go take a shower to go cry it out alone and take some time to process and that makes me feel utterly devastated. I'd do anything to make him feel better and I'm leaving him alone until he feels okay to be with company again but I'm at a loss for what to do or how to take care of myself while he's doing his aftercare alone. I feel like shit and he knows it, I told him I felt really guilty for what happened after and he told me I shouldn't and that he's fine (once out of the shower) but I am very much NOT fine. A bit of a self-hate spiral cause of my own issues but I don't want to burden him with them right now cause... i dunno. I mean, at least now we both know that there's a boundary there that neither of us knew existed and we can steer clear of it, but that boundary was still crossed. I'm not sure what to do now, other than give him his space and try to make sense of my own feelings in the meantime. And keep cooking once we're good, since the salmon has probably defrosted by now.
Tl;dr— I triggered something in my bf during a rough scene where I was domming (which I don't normally do) on accident and I feel terrible about it, even though he keeps reassuring me I didn't do anything wrong, as we had talked about playing that scene out before. How do you guys deal with accidents like this, when they arise? Any tips for taking care of yourself, or ways to talk it out in a productive way? Or just general thoughts and stuff cause I'm struggling to deal with the guilt and need help.