Effort and attention

Something has been playing on my mind since the breakup of my first and only dynamic and I was wondering if any of you had anything to add to it.

I feel like, for the vast majority of our dynamic, I put in most of the effort, physically, emotionally and financially. I spent a lot of time thinking up ways to spoil her and treat her, learning new things about her and learning new skills to be of better service.

I was a finsub, and I essentially took on a part time job to find luxuries for her. I think across our entire dynamic, I managed to see her ‘for free’ a scant handful of times, and over the course of a dynamic that contained an anniversary, two birthdays and two Christmasses, I received a mug and a keychain (which was itself a free add on to a gift that I had bought her). I helped her with her wedding and I was always there when something needed done.

In return, she took the lead during our scenes, which were extraordinarily infrequent. I appreciate that scenes from a dom/me perspective can take significant emotional labour, but when they also involve service they can take a lot of emotional labour from a sub too.

I guess my question off the back of all of this is: how much effort do you put into your dynamic, and how much effort does your dominant put in? Is it 50:50 but with different kinds of effort? Was my dynamic atypical, or was I just emotionally unready for it?