Sorry to hear about your bad experience with your duals. Maybe activity or illusionary will be better for you.
I had an EIE (guardian figure) force me to plan out my entire month, and put a lot of baseless restrictions on me, like "You can only go out 3 times a fortnight". The motive was clear - they wanted most of my free time to be spent on them, and to have a sense of control over my activities and restrict my freedom, because freedom is unpredictable and therefore psychological torment.
So yeah, they can be suffocating. I actually escaped one in the middle of the night, LOL. It was over something stupid. I had a venus fly trap that I didn't take proper care of, so it died, and I jokingly commented, "we should hold a funeral", and the EIE burst into tears and started calling me insensitive for making a funeral joke, and that she had to go to a funeral of a friend, and then started calling me names. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the escalation, EIE got even angrier, I called them crazy, stormed off to my room and planned an escape.
What annoyed me the most was that, had the EIE been in a good mood, the joke would've just slid off and they wouldn't care. Depending on their mood they will react differently. It's exhausting to have to constantly adjust to this. I maintained it for 7 years with this EIE, but as I meet more of this type I can see what's coming and I automatically create a large distance with them. (Although if you do this prepare for them to tell you that they think you're stuck up )
To be fair I do know one healthy EIE (a rare pokemon) that doesn't cry over spilled milk. Thank goodness