It's not easy to find the confidence to speak up when you sense something is wrong. But you need to do that. You need to speak up and ask at the merest whiff of trouble. Be proactive, and suggest options yourself. Riding into town today, I heard a lovely song that has a wonderful phrase in it.
Fear can act like kindling.
It can rise up into a brushfire and obliterate communication. Speak up early, at the very first sign of fear. Waiting invites ugly patterns, invites problems to become entrenched. When I went to college, I had zero concept of what they meant. I had never even heard that term.