This is pretty common yeah. I (m) like the idea of both being a dom or a sub, I think(?) I cant actually tell if the idea of being a sub is really just my wanting affection and to feel loved rather than actually being submissive. It feels nice to have the girl be in control sometimes or just show you that they actually love you and want to make you feel good. I remember asking her one time when we started dating that I wanted her to take direction too but she said “oh, really” in a kind of put-down way so from that point on I didn’t want to talk to her about what would make me happy at all. Because I felt like even if she reacted that way to something relatively small it would be a disaster every time I asked her for something. I hate acknowledging that power imbalance so I opted to choose keep going and I never let myself enjoy it except a few times. My ex-gf was really into being submissive and I felt like I didn’t really have a choice to try other things or want to disappoint her. I guess I was used to having previous relations always control everything about sex and I didn’t want to acknowledge that she had a lot of power over me because I think I valued sex a lot more than I let on.

Anyway sorry that became sort of a rant. Basically it is very common for men to feel like they can’t talk about this at all either because of societal reasons or just bad past experiences. Here’s the best advice you can get: while he definitely needs to learn and grow to feel more secure you can also help him with that a lot. I would start by just avoiding trying to say anything about his being submissive (avoid using that term) outside of sex as it’s really easy for guys to feel negatively emasculated. I’m not saying how he reacts is necessarily right but you should also make sure you avoid triggering him if possible (again really easy for a lot of guys, I think I personally would get triggered about this type of thing very easily and would have appreciated if my ex said things differently in a lot of situations). For him, it’s also probably scary to try to ask or bring it up even and took a great deal of courage to mention it. I would just try to be more controlling next time you do have sex and not try and ask him what to do. I would read some guides online about being a female dom and you could try those and you’d probably be able to see if he likes it. You really will have to take the initiative with a lot of this as he won’t be comfortable but he will slowly open up over time. You sound like a real keeper for being this concerned about his wellbeing and satisfaction.