So my husband and I do indoor rock climbing a few times a week. Some background: he has been climbing since he was in middle school and is really good at it. I hadn't ever really climbed before I met him, and neither of us had climbed in several years until we decided to get back into it a year ago. He's still a really good climber, and even though I'm still relatively new to it, I like it a lot and feel like I've improved a ton in the past year, but I'm still not as good as him. Also, the only type of climbing we do is bouldering, which is on 15' walls and requires no harness or ropes, i.e. you can do it yourself without a partner belaying you.

When we first started climbing we stuck together more, because we were both new to bouldering and starting at the same level. But since he had previous experience he got good again way faster than me, plus as I got more comfortable climbing I didn't need him to be my cheerleader for every route. So now whenever we go, we both do our own thing (since the stuff we each want to climb is usually not on the same wall) and maybe check in with each other a few times over the hour or two that we spend there. This has actually bothered me for a while but not enough to say anything about it.

The breaking point was last night at the gym; I was on one side of the room climbing stuff at my level while he was off somewhere else. I saw something funny happen and went to go tell him about it. He was climbing with a couple other guys working the same problem, and I tried to tell him the story, but I felt like he brushed me off to keep hanging out with his new friends. For some reason this really upset me (I think in part because I was already having a not great day of climbing), and I left to go digest my feelings by myself and then talked to him in the car on the way home about how hurt I felt that he didn't want to spend time with me. He said he'll try to stick closer to me in the future, but I'm posting here because I still feel weird about the whole thing. 

So it basically boils down to:
I feel like he doesn't want to spend time with me, even though objectively I know that's not true because he says all the time how glad he is that I climb with him. I told him last night that I go to the gym for 2 reasons: to climb and to hang out with him, so when half of that doesn't happen it makes me sad.

But I can see his perspective too, he's a much more social person than me, plus since he's a better climber he wants to talk to people who he can get beta from. He and I are very different sizes (I'm petite, he's tall), so we have very different climbing styles. He can't learn a lot from watching me climb and vice versa, which is why he likes to hang out with other dudes there — they have more similar builds, climbing styles, and skill levels, so of course he can learn a lot more from hanging out with them.