I’m struggling to break apart from my wife. Don’t get me wrong, I love her and I love hanging out with her, but I’m sick of not feeling like my own person with my own interests and my own friends.

I’ve been getting on well with my coworkers recently and decided I wanted to make a plan to go hang out with them all. I wanted to plan like a team bonding day and as we all work various hours throughout the day, thought planning a river day would be fun because people could come and go as they please no matter what time they had to work that day. So I’m really excited and I’m telling my wife and my wife starts talking about it as if she would be coming. So I reminded her that this is something I want to do with my coworkers. She immediately gets all upset about it. And this happens anytime I want to do something that doesn’t involve her. I wanted to go sky diving and she didn’t, so a coworker said she’d go with me, and suddenly my wife is upset that I’m not just going alone instead. When I shaved my head (totally impulsive decision), my wife was in class so I FaceTimed my best friend while I did it and my wife literally screamed at me for like two hours. I went to a bar with a friend and ended up at a gay bar and had oodles of fun, and my wife got mad at me for doing “gay stuff” without her. I feel like if I want to do anything, it HAS to be with her. I can’t do anything new with anyone else or by myself because i automatically have to do it with her. And it’s making me feel stuck.

My wife and I spend majority of our time together, we text all day (if I don’t respond she calls), and we spend every evening together. We go out together, we do fun stuff together, we have date days, we spend sunny afternoons in downtown together, so like, it’s not like I’m running off and spending every free moment doing something with someone else. My wife and I are ALWAYS together. I just want to be able to do stuff with other people too without it feeling like I HAVE to invite her or she will get mad. I want to be able to have friends. My friend invited me to go with her and her friends to this carnival this weekend and I’d love to be able to go and just, be with friends and not feel like a permanent twosome all the time. But I’m afraid to ask because I already know she’s going to be upset about it.

Am I being selfish? Do all my “firsts”, even as minuscule as a river day, HAVE to be with my spouse? Do we have to do everything together? I get that she wants to be included, but we already spend so much time together. Is it wrong of me to want to be my own person and do my own things?