Mistress Matisse is an excellent example of the psychological insight of the best professional dominatrices:
What you’re describing, when you say you want to, “retain my dignity and my basic equality as a human being” – well, darlin’, that’s what every submissive wants. I have met a few people who claimed they wanted to have their dignity and their basic humanity stripped away from them, but a) that’s rare and b) I don’t think it’s an emotionally healthy goal.
So aside from them, every submissive says “I don’t want it to be about what I want.” Of course you don’t. That would defeat the purpose.
But in another sense, you do, because you want to feel the way you want to feel. Thus is the challenge for the top in consensual, erotic, dominant/submissive relationships.
So yes, in that arena, you’re quite normal. What puzzles me is the remark about being submissive in the relationship but not in the bedroom? That’s the opposite of what I often hear, which is that someone wants to be sexually submissive but operate as an equal in the rest of the relationship. So I think what you’re saying is that you want a bossy controlling woman to have more-or-less vanilla sex with? That’s perfectly okay – bossy women need love too – let’s just get that clear.