Don't know how to alleviate a friend's concerns without her escalating things.
Hello! I hope throwaway accounts are allowed here. For reasons that will be obvious from this post, I don't particularly want this getting connected to me irl but I could really use some pointers on this. Also full transparency this is mostly just tangentially BDSM related but I figured there's a high likelihood of somebody here having at least a similar experience and can advise.
I [22M] have been with my bf/Dom [27M] for almost three years now. We have a really fantastic relationship, and I truly mean that. This man absolutely adores me and cannot do enough for me. For some (relevant I promise) context on how we met: I initially moved to the country I live in now to study and had gone to a kink night at a gay bar with some uni friends, partially to get a feel for the scene and partially because the idea of something like that being able to happen so openly was a novelty to me. Met my now bf there because he was a bit enamoured by my Very Sexy Exotic Accent, discovered our kinks basically align 100% and started having kinky but casual sex pretty much straight away. We both developed romantic feelings somewhere down the line and now here we are.
So the issue at hand: a friend of mine [23F] has developed some concerns about my relationship, namely thinking my bf is abusing me and I'm just saying its a consensual kink dynamic to cover for him. Her reasoning for believing this largely hinges on three things:
There was a time around a year ago where we'd tried out some new rope that ended up being not so good and had irritated my skin, especially around my shoulders and forearms. I can fully admit that the irritation marks looked very suspicious and it did kind of look like someone had been manhandling me in the not fun way. This friend was concerned by the markings and asked what happened and if I needed to talk about anything at all. I explained it was just from being bound (something she knows I'm into) but she pointed out that she had never seen marks like that on me before even though she knew I'd been doing that stuff the whole time she's known me. I tried explaining it was the type of rope but she didn't seem to buy it.
Another time around nine months ago I did very literally walk into a wardrobe door in the dark and give myself a black eye. It was my own fault bc I was the one who left the door open in the first place but that's a very stereotypical excuse for DV, I do understand. She became convinced bf had hit me. Which, in the interest of clarity, he has never done even in a consensual way besides some occasional light spanking as impact play isn't really something either of us are into. Again, she did not buy this explanation.
Also around nine months ago, I had a bit of a dip in my mental health and wasn't taking care of myself well. Everything that falls under the self care umbrella fell by the wayside and I was a bit off the tracks in terms of substances and things, it wasn't very pretty. Bf ended up sitting me down and asking what he could do to support me, as he can only look after me so much if I'm not also looking after myself. I told him that I don't always know how to look after myself if I only have myself to answer to for it, so we implemented some new rules in our dynamic which help him help me keep myself accountable. These rules are things such as me drinking the correct amount of water each day or going to the gym so many times each week or having a curfew if I'm out and there will be booze or substances around. I report back to him on all of these things and have punishments if I fail to meet them properly. All of this is a way to help me regulate and take care of myself without putting too much pressure/dependency on him for my mental state. However, in this friends perspective it comes off that my bf is being controlling and she, again, doesn't buy that I asked for this.
I for the most part have been able to brush these concerns she has off as she has not been particularly insistent about them so far, or so I thought. I recently learned from another friend that she has been throwing around the idea of staging an intervention to get me to see my relationship is actually bad. Apparently my other friends aren't up for this, so she has now been talking about going to the police or even reaching out to my family to see if they would help. The police I think could be more of an inconvenience than a real issue because I am fairly sure once I make it clear that nothing untoward is going on they won't want to waste their time, but my family could be a problem. The country I come from doesn't exactly have a reputation for being welcoming to gay people and my family are very traditional. I also have some quite scary people in my immediate family. If they find out I am in a relationship with a man for three years, I could be at a very serious risk. I immediately confronted my friend with this information upon finding it out, and she put all the cards on the table and said she's been worried about my relationship since it started. She thinks the age gap and the fact that he was first enamoured by my being foreign demonstrate that his intentions with me were always predatory. She thinks I was "vulnerable" because I was younger and in a different country to my "support network"° and he saw that and took an opportunity to manipulate me into an unhealthy relationship but convince me that I wanted it. I'll admit I got offended by that because I felt patronised and we ended up having a bit of an argument over it.
In the days since I've come to accept that her heart is in the right place here and she isn't acting with malice, but now I'm stuck on how to convince her she has nothing to worry about. I know ending the friendship is potentially an option, but I'd like to avoid it if I can because she has always been a good friend to me otherwise plus I'm concerned that if I do end it, she'll take that as bf isolating me from someone with concerns and it'll prompt her to take those next steps she's been considering. Bf has offered to talk to her himself but idk if that will help given she does not believe me so probably will not believe him either. Has anyone been in this position before and knows what to do? Thanks.
°(in case it wasn't clear my family are not and have never been a support network for me & being in a different country to them doesn't make a spot of difference to that)