I was also an only child and, if anything, I tend to have the opposite issue: not seeing/accepting almost anyone as authority. My parents never treated me in that way, in fact some of the problems I am still having are due to not learning good discipline/being disciplined as a child... My parents never followed my school projects, not even my grades too much (they were typically very good so no concerns). I do not tend to see authority merely based on position of someone relative to me, even a boss. I do in select cases based on competency and useful mentorship. But I would have never even thought of a T as an authority figure if I hadn't read it here on PC, or my first T tried to impose it (which I boldly rejected). But I definitely agree that if a parent has an authoritarian, perfectionistic style, an only child will probably suffer from it more than siblings. With siblings, there can be at least another person on a similar level to go to vent or rebel, but one child surrounded only by adults with overly high expectations has no one to give them a reality check if something is unrealistic.

It's funny LT, because I have the impression your T is trying to often go against that authority figure role in speech, to make you not see him as such, but this whole color coding the emailing sounds pretty controlling to me even if he adds there are no real consequences or nothing would affect your relationship negatively. I personally would not have liked that color coding either and would just prefer to have a clearer agreement on what the free/paid emailing rules are. I think the 15 minutes is very vague and inaccurate, how does he measure that at all? Does he always set a timer when he opens an emails from you or writes one? Does he never get distracted and finish an email later? But I understand it is hard to set clear rules with this and define the criteria. I would prefer word count per email, it is cleaner and easier to keep correctly. Even if he might sometimes write a longer email in 5 mins and spend a lot more on composing a shorter one.