My SO is unconcerned with how little time we spend together.

Dude, I had a whole reply written out here, but after your last update, it's pretty clear: the problem is not that you have a new hobby. It's that your relationship sucks. He doesn't take any interest in you at home, why on EARTH would you expect him to take an interest in what you're doing outside the home? He is not going to change. DTMFA.

he thinks he can never see me, put no effort into being a part of my life (like actually wondering what I did with the group today, or who is in it, or wanting to meet them), and still come out ahead of every guy. I don't know if it is complacency or confidence, but I need help forming this issue in words without sounding like I just want to manipulate him and make him jealous. What? Okay, I totally don't understand the pushback you're getting in this thread at all. I totally understand the issue you are having and I don't think it is manipulative at all. You want your boyfriend to be a part of your life! That's normal. It's pretty much the point of having one. If I were in your relationship I would feel incredibly miserable, lonely, and unfulfilled. One thing you can glean from this thread I think is that what you are trying to say will be misinterpreted if you make it about these other guys in this band. Maybe you didn't really know a good way to broach the issue so you just went with that, but as you can see, that's not going to be an effective way to go, I don't think. But I think I might understand why you broached the topic this way. It sounds like your boyfriend pretty regularly just shuts you down when you try to talk about how you feel. That rather than listening to you, and trying to do his best to understand you and reach some sort of spot where you're both happy, he kind of just makes a case for why you are wrong. I don't know, that's what I start thinking when someone talks about how they have been trying to work out an issue with their partner but never seem to be able to articulate themselves well enough. I think partners who are really concerned with your happiness really do their best to figure out what you are saying and understand you even when you are hardly articulate at all. It's when someone is actively opposing understanding you that suddenly you never seem to be able to articulate "well enough." IMO. But anyway. Forget about these guys in the band and don't make it about them. This is the problem: I have tried unsuccessfully to get us to spend more time together, also for a long time, and I've become mostly okay with that. We don't eat meals together, go to bed at the same time, or have any hobby together. We talk for about five minutes when I get home. It's kind of sad, but most of our interaction happens when I share links with him on Facebook (and we live together!)... At this moment, it feels like he barely has room for me. This is a HUGE problem. What's the point of having a "boyfriend" in this scenario? What kind of relationship can you possibly have in 5 minutes a day of chatting?? You are allowed to say to him, "This is not okay with me at all, and I'm not going to live the rest of my life like this. Very simply, I'm not getting my needs met, and this is not the type of relationship I want to be in. I love you, but if this is how things are going to stay, at some point I'm going to leave." See how "articulate" he finds that. I'm worried that you think you can't just say the truth like that because "I would want him to do what makes him happy, just as he says he just wants me to do what makes me happy." Like if you objected at all to him doing anything that "makes him happy," no matter how it affects you, then that would make you this unsupportive, selfish, bad girlfriend/bad person. Here's the thing. You can totally support his right to do what makes him happy. But YOU have no obligation to keep being his girlfriend while he does what makes him happy. If he can't find a way of living that makes him happy at the same time that it meets your needs and makes you happy, then you have every right to start moving on, and that is the right thing to do. And it is okay for you to TELL him that. It doesn't make you a bad person. I think you are expressing that in a roundabout way with this: he thinks he can never see me, put no effort into being a part of my life ... and still come out ahead of every guy. I think it would be great to TELL him this, just don't make it about other guys. I think you can tell him, "Look, if you never see me, and you put no effort into being part of my life, I'm going to lose interest in being in this relationship." There is 0 that is manipulative about that statement, it's the honest truth. Good luck. I think you deserve better than this and could quite easily find it.

Yeah, you're not really placing him in a fair situation here. I don't know exactly what you told him, but I'm assuming you didn't present it to him better than you're presenting it to us. What's he supposed to say? That he doesn't support the project and he doesn't want you to do it? That would be shitty. So what's left? Being supportive, which he did. Look, do you want to do this project? If you don't, you shouldn't, but if you do, he should be supportive. If you want him to say you can do it but express jealousy or concern (or try to veto it but you're going to do it anyway), that is manipulative -- it's like you're testing him. If you want to spend more time with him, raise that as its own concern. Find ways to spend more time together. If he isn't willing to work with you to spend more time together and doesn't seem to want to, that's your real problem. If you don't feel appreciated in this relationship, raise that as its own concern. If you don't feel like he wants to know about your life or be part of it, again, raise that as its own concern. Do you secretly want him to talk you out of starting this project? Do you want him to give up his hobby? Figure this stuff out and then go have another talk with him.

OP here: Like I said, if it were reversed, I would ask about the people he's with and try to meet them. When I started talking about the people I will be working with, he told me he didn't want to hear me go on about these other people. Maybe out of jealousy. This, in particular, seems like an unhelpful way to approach the situation. I love my husband and I care about what he does with his life, but I will basically never ask him to describe people he works with or participates in casual group activities with, because I don't like to talk about casual acquaintances that I don't personally know. I just don't find it interesting. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my own acquaintances who I've met and hung out with. I can barely keep his coworkers straight in my head, since I've met most of them only once or twice in passing, and I know next to nothing about who he hangs out with at his various weekend hobby meetups. I figure that if he develops a real friendship with them, I'll meet them and get to know them, and otherwise they just aren't on my radar and I'm fine with that. I suspect that your SO isn't jealous, just irritated and bored with listening to you talk about people he doesn't know. Maybe he feels like he has enough acquaintances already and doesn't need to meet any more right now. He might be acting like kind of a jerk about it, and I'm sorry if that's the case, but that's a very different problem.

that he thinks he can never see me, put no effort into being a part of my life (like actually wondering what I did with the group today, or who is in it, or wanting to meet them), and still come out ahead of every guy. It took you a while to get there but I think this is the crux of your issue. I can completely see your side of this. This is also not a fun thing to think of someone you love and especially not a fun thing to bring up to someone. You want more effort put in your relationship. The only way to get there is to a) put more effort in yourself by being more spontaneous, making more time for each other, doing special things and/or b) tell him explicitly that you want both of you to put a bit of focus back on the relationship because you feel you've both let it get put on the back burner. This has nothing to do with the project.

If you go at this like "my concern is that you're not spontaneously exhibiting the reaction that I would ideally like you to have" then you're just setting yourself up for frustration. Any conversation where you're like "I need you to feel the way I want you to feel and show me that you feel that way without me telling you those things beforehand" --- this is a mug's game. Nobody wins there. If your problem is, "lately I feel like you don't really care about me; you don't seem interested when I talk about what's going on with me and you don't seem to care that we don't see each other much" then tell him that. then at least he'll know what's bothering you and you can get a sense if his reaction to that. But you're going to have to cop to being worried about the relationship to address this. You seem to want him to reassure you that you have nothing to worry about without ever having to openly admit that you are worried. This is demanding the near-impossible.

I don't need a ton of time from him, but I do need some indication that he would like to know about my life. If he's not interested in doing much with you or what you do in your life, then he's not a significant a significant other as you had previously believed.

it sounds like he is passively supporting you by letting you do what you want, but not actively supporting you by a) making more of an effort to schedule quality time with you since you will have extra time taken by the hobby and b) taking an interest in it (wanting to meet your friends, asking questions about it). you want to do your hobby, but in order to do the hobby, you need to know that it won't take away from what little time you currently spend with him. and you want him to take an interest in you & not take you for granted. these are reasonable things to want.

I ended up divorced in a situation like this. Two years ago my husband had his demanding job, and his intense hobby, and I was there for him. When I started going out and doing my own thing, which sometimes involved crashing with friends overnight, sometimes for multiple nights, he didn't seem to miss me. In the span of three months, I realized that even though he wasn't into anyone else, he didn't have room in his life to have the kind of relationship I needed with him. He was married to his hobby, and lacked emotions beyond "fondness" for me. Not saying this will happen to you, but take some time to reexamine the foundations of your relationship and see if you're honestly compatible.