<human>: Her (we'll call her Stacy) and I [21M] have been together for nearly two years, and we have a pretty typical relationship. We have no major problems, and there have been no bumps in the road, except for this one issue.

She's in school to become a nurse, I am in school to become an accountant. I also hold a full time job in accounting at a venture capital funded tech startup. It has been a blast working at this place, and I love my job a lot.

Occasionally the team I'm on will go out for a happy hour or outing (maybe once a month), and occasionally I will do something after hours with a few of my closer co-workers (maybe once a quarter). Every time I bring up one of these events that I'll be attending, Stacy just shuts down on me. The most recent is a company wide dinner coming up this next week, we have an all day company kickoff followed by a dinner. The all day meeting is paid for me, but the dinner and after hours events are not.

Stacy refuses to understand why attending the dinner is important to me and my career, and she says she doesn't think I need to be attending anything that isn't paid. Anyone who has worked in business will know that networking is important, and being around to these events are helpful to your career. This event is especially important because our company is cross functional between 4 different states. People who I work with daily, but who I've never met before, are going to be at this event.

I have previously declined to go on team outings that I would have liked to go on. And to be clear, I don't do these things a lot. I don't have friends outside of work (literally), my time is devoted to Stacy, school, and work, that is it. We typically have weekends and nights to ourselves every week.

How do I explain this in an amicable fashion? I feel like a child explaining myself every-time I want to attend an event or hangout with my team, and if its not excessive, I don't understand why its such a problem for her?

Can you summarize the given text in a few sentences?
<bot>: GF refuses to understand why I wish to occasionally attend un-paid after hours work events, and thinks that I should only attend something if it is paid.