Am I being selfish?

My fiancée and I have been together for almost 3 years and are very much in love. We are looking forward to our wedding and our bright future together. Outwith the relationship I enjoy playing football, as I have done all my life but over the last year or so any mention of going to play football has been met with resistance and annoyance if I go to play football. My fiancée claims that I would rather play football than spend time with her, which I do not feel is true as it only takes up a small portion of the week (3 hours out of 7 days).

In addition to football I also have other interests, such as music, which have been cast to the side in order to focus on qualifications I am undertaking in my spare time to better my career and ultimately improve the quality of life that my fiancée ad I will be able to enjoy in the future. With the qualification's end in sight, I hoped to perhaps use some of the spare time to rekindle my other interests but my fiancée has other ideas, saying I won't have time as I'll have to learn another language to better communicate with my fiancée's family. I fully appreciate that this is an important issue, I just don't see why I need to put all of my time into doing this and couldn't have some time to myself.

Am I selfish for wanting to have some alone time?

You're not selfish, she is.

In addition to your and her individual interests try to find joint things to do together. Address spending more quality time as a couple and be active in and plan for that. If you want to be a free agent and single and pursue only your pursuits, then cancel the wedding. She is in "preparing to marry" mode and you need to at least understand that.

Instead of pondering what other hobbies and interests you could pursue solo, you should be in premarital counselling to sort all this out.

This isn't about football or music or career development. She's not annoyed at those pursuits, she's annoyed that you are drifting away seemingly taking her for granted and not putting in effort.

Getting ready for a wedding and marriage is not the time to make up for lost time and hobbies and pursuits as a bachelor. Presenting this much resistance to anything she hopes you are interested in isn't helping your cause.

It's a time you need to take more interest in being a couple and building bond with quality time and good communication. Stop rationalizing to her and simply start talking about some things you'll both do this weekend, next week, the honeymoon whatever. Talk like you're part of a couple, not a single guy pursuing his own thing.

My fiancée claims that I would rather play football than spend time with her. I hoped to perhaps use some of the spare time to rekindle my other interests. I just don't see why I need to put all of my time into doing this and couldn't have some time to myself.

I'm getting married in exactly a month from now, helping orchestrate family from 3 continents. Also the primary planner. Been more than capable of setting time aside for hobbies and pursuits. Zero reason not to unless you just want to take advantage of the excuse. People who inflate basic preparations that can be handled with sensible time management truly baffle me.

I play sports every weekend. My lady and her friends go out for a long brunch or dinner every weekend. These aren't "bachelor pursuits." It's called being normal and healthy, having your own hobbies and activities. That doesn't go away because you've got to book a photographer and follow up with people who are late on their RSVPs.

So, no, at face value, there's nothing in your post that would indicate playing football on a Saturday afternoon is selfish. And if there is a broader issue, she needs to suck less at communicating it. If there is indeed a drought in quality time together, that should be the focal point, not lamenting you doing something you enjoy. That's spiteful and petty. Still, I would suggest premarital counseling, if for no other reason than to simply have done it. It's a good practice for even the healthiest of couples engaged to wed.

Well, do you normally plan date nights with her, and cool things to do? Are you hands-on with the wedding plans?

Or do you have her plan all the couple things to do, and she is the only one working on wedding plans and coordinating everything?

If the latter, yeah, I'd be pretty bothered. All your free time, football (3 hours is a lot when you have obligations), music trumped by qualifications, and work, learning general speak for the wedding shows you take her and her family as a priority.

Now if you plan dates all the time, and helping out with the wedding, then tell her football is exercise and getting some time to decompress.

What does your average week look like? Does she have friends or relatives she spends time with, without you? Do you two have a group of friends or another couple you get together with? Or are you the sole center of her universe and she doesn't have much of a life without you? What are your evenings like? If you eat dinner together after work every day and watch t.v. or whatever you do after that, and you don't spend your time playing video games, or anything else where you are ignoring her, then she's being unreasonable and smothering.

Explain that you need time with your own hobbies once a week, and if she's going to stress you out about it, that you're questioning if you can live a life like that. If discussions and pre-marital counseling cannot resolve this issue, you have some important decisions to make.

As far as wanting you to learn another language, that should've been a suggestion, not a demand. I'd suggest you two read some books on communicating like Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Wow....I'm actually a little taken aback by your fiance's behavior and demands. If my SO took that tone and attitude with me, OP, I'd honestly get cold feet about proceeding further with them.

No, it's not selfish at all for both of you to have and pursue some personal hobbies and have some time apart from each other on a regular basis during the week. In fact, it's critical and healthy. Your SO should support your passions and not seek to get in the way of them and control your time. It honestly seems to me like she has been putting up with things for the last three years while chomping at the bit to lay down the law and change you once married and you can't easily dump her. Beware.

As for demanding that you learn the language.....wow....again.... I mean if it's something you wanted to do on your own, that's all nice and good, but she has zero right to demand anything such from you, let alone take the tone that she is taking with you about it. This is coming from someone who also has family abroad, etc. I wouldn't dream of making such demands on anyone. It's just wrong. Granted, I'd the thrilled if they decided they want to at least try to learn some on their own accord but that's as far as that goes for me.

Honestly, I think you need to tread carefully here, take a big step back and take a very careful look at who your fiance really is. It may well be that she is just showing her true colors and attitudes just now. I wholeheartedly agree that you need to spend a lot of time in premarital counseling and take that seriously and use that time to hash out healthy marital boundaries in terms of finances, lifestyle, hobbies, giving each other proper personal space, supporting each other's pursuits/hobbies, etc. These are all critical things to work out before you say "I do" because these are the very things that destroy marriages when agreements aren't present and surprise changes happen post wedding.

In complete agreement with DF. Additionally, never put up with these sorts of proxy arguments, even if there is a legitimate and underlying issue. There is zero room in my relationships for spite or pettiness. Someone who chooses to frame an argument over lack of quality time by telling me I shouldn't do something I enjoy is pretty much the antithesis of the supportive partner I'd choose to be around, never mind marry. Never has there been a single moment in my relationship I've seen my fiancee enjoying something and elected to make that thing the issue.

And when on the receiving end of such treatment, I've never been, nor should anyone be afraid to say, "Hey, I know there may very well be a deeper issue here than [insert misdirection], and if there is and you want to work together on that, I'm all ears. But I'm not going to continue a discussion about [thing]." And be sure to stand by your word either direction they choose to go from there. I've gone the route of dignifying bad and resentful miscommunication in the past. People who communicate like this tend to be as self-centered as you'd expect from the child-like manner, and are likely to take your best intentions and efforts working around it as being justified in their bad approach, so I simply shut it down-- or at least my participation in it.

I'm wondering about your fiancee's background. This isn't a visa situation, is it? And this isn't an Internet Relationship, is it? Do you folks live together? What country are you in?

On it's face, she seems incredibly selfish. Does she also start arguments about this? Is she trying to control and manipulate you in other ways? I'm trying to get a sense of the entire story and not just this specific question. But this could certainly be a major warning sign here. And it is your future we're talking about here.

I will echo what the others have said, these seem like outrageous and unreasonable demands on her part. She seems to not understand what a healthy relationship should be like, and this could get very toxic very fast.

I'm wondering, when did these demands start happening? You've been together 3 years now... just wondering what the context is as well.

If you allow someone to run your life before the wedding, it's not going to get better after the wedding. It will be worse.

I'd negotiate this now and start learning how to put boundaries in place. Work with fiance to learn one another's bribery material. Then you can offer to exchange the things you want for something of value to your partner. Use professional help if necessary, but don't play the manipulatable doormat, or it will buy you a lifetime of hell.

Head high.

You can assume this is temporary until the wedding is over and you two have settled into comfortably living together and being more secure with each other. Do remember to keep the romance alive but retain individuality balanced with being a couple. Your premarital counseling sessions will likely cover that and better communication.

You don't have to assume she is a control freak suddenly since you have been dating 3 years, you know her and obviously want to get married to her. There are much better solutions regarding carving out individual time vs couple time than "cancel the wedding and run!".

In fact most people who become a couple have to adjust and negotiate this in transitioning from single life to married life. And since marriages are dynamic it will continually need to be communicated and negotiated fairly, for example when children come along and then there are even more time situations to negotiate. So while you can run, you will still have to learn to communicate and negotiate individual time needs and together time needs with anyone else and under most circumstances.

We are looking forward to our wedding and our bright future together.

You can assume this is temporary until the wedding is over and you two have settled into comfortably living together and being more secure with each other.

There's no way I'd assume that. We teach people how to treat us. Going along with mistreatment before a wedding cements mistreatment in place for after the wedding.

I'd resolve this before going anywhere near an altar, and if that means postponing or scrapping the wedding, then that's exactly what I'd do.

Decide what you want your 'forever' to look like.