Mmmm, you lost me at the toilet seat. Oh, putting down the seat is basic good manners, but I think some people are raising eye-brows over more than manners. It’s all the “I” and “mine”, not to mention “own” that are running through the posts.
I’m with Chessic. Not his responses here, or his response to his wife, or anything else about what he’s saying. But my wife pissed me off tonight so for the moment all wives are evil. I’ll get over it before long, but in the meantime, I’m on his side.
60 posts in, and we’ve got, like, two people that have answered the OP. So far, it’s been all about how much of a bastard I’ve been to dare question my wife in front of company. It’s all been about how I’m the man here and how I should do everything my wife wants. It’s all been commentary about how I don’t love my wife enough or how I’m so cheap.
Not a single person, save for Eonwe and stpauler, has actually answered the OP question of who deserves the free tickets and what my wife should’ve done. Is it because it’s late at night that you all have trouble focusing?
No one deserved the free tickets. Your wife should have discussed this with you before offering the tickets to others, and you should have waited to work this out with your wife until the two of you were alone. And your greedy friends should have offered to buy their own tickets.
I think your friends (the couple) deserve the free tickets. Your wife chose to give them to your friends. Maybe she should have discussed it with you first, or maybe she should not have needed to, but she gave them to the friends. Once a gift is given, it belongs to those people.
It’s because no-one else cares about two $20 tickets.
It’s because people have been distracted by other unpleasant implications in your post.
It’s because others aren’t quite so hung-up on who deserves what, and are more interested in …
… nothing, now that I think it through.
I figured you could have extrapolated from my comment, but since you want it to be spelled out: she was right, you were wrong. Your friends deserved the tickets, especially since it’s really fucking rude to try to take back a gift once it’s been given, and your wife should have placated you by telling you in private (since it’s really fucking rude to argue in front of others) that next time, if it matters so much to you that you have a freebie ticket to her crummy play that no one wants to see anyway, she’ll consult with you first since you are so kind as to put a roof over her head, etc.
Is that better? 
Nobody “deserves” a gift. Your wife “should have” done exactly what she did: give them to the people she *wanted *to give them to, because they were given to her (not you) by her management (not yours) to give away.
But if you have a couple and you have a husband, it makes more sense, logistically and in accordance with common etiquette, to give the pair of comp tickets to the couple. So, in the sense that “should have” often means “what would you expect a person to do”, the answer is still…give the tickets to the couple.
Your wife’s friends deserve the free tickets. Your wife should have gone right ahead and given them the tickets. When you said “no, one of those is for me” she should have given you the ticket and then moved out of the house (YOUR house). At least that’s what I would have done if you were my husband. Maybe the reason you can’t see how you are coming off here is because it’s so late at night?
Anyone hearing Chris Rock here? Only here instead of a cookie, it’s a theater ticket.
I’m glad I opened this thread. I’ve got some free stuff coming - what it is doesn’t matter - and I know one of my mates would be delighted with it. My wife might like it too, but there’s only enough for one, and now I’ve read through this I know I can say “Fuck it - she can buy her own”. Problem solved!
Two people have to pay $6.67, but one person gets to pay only $6.66. Which one should it be?
We’re not your personal polling company. We answer what we want when we want and you decided to dump your purse out on us so suck it up when we dig through your metaphorical stuff.
The tickets are deserved by whomever your wife chooses to give them to and the time to discuss with her the distribution of the tickets is in private when no one else is there. Your wife did exactly as she should have; distributed her tickets as she saw fit.
She should give them to the donkey so its family can see its big break in showbiz.
I think I’m reading between the lines here, (and thus probably still not answering the intended question), but frankly, if you feel like a $20 free ticket in any way adequately compensates you for the sacrifices you made for her to be in this show . . .
your sacrifices are pretty minor deals.
If the ticket price was a heck of a lot higher, I’d still be bothered by the kind of marital accounting that says that if you do your own laundry and provide your own dinners, and pick her up (when you’d rather be sleeping), you deserve first dibs on free tickets.
But I’d understand–because if ticket prices were high, then paying money out of your account to the employers might be a meaningful sacrifice, a meaningful way of saying “I support you” to your wife. And so offering you the free ticket might be a meaningful gesture from your wife to you of saying “I appreciate your support”. Or it might be just a mercenary calculation that her earnings increase the household budget more if you don’t have to buy an expensive ticket just putting most of her earnings back in the producer’s pockets.
But when ticket prices are low, claiming that you deserve the ticket because of your sacrifices sounds petty and cheap.
Especially because you haven’t a good job of convincing us that you’ve made significant sacrifices.
And there are ways in which a job acting is not equivalent to a job on an assembly-line. Or a job in retail. (And yes, I’ve known people who fuss about things like buying the bargain brand of sticky notes not being supportive of family members who are involved in the production of Post-It Notes).
If your relationship is anything like the OP’s, I’m sure your wife will give just as many fucks about what you do with $20 worth of free swag from your workplace. 
This is exactly my take on it. If your wife offered your friends 20 bucks worth of, say, cheese (stealing the food from your own mouth!), would you be here complaining? Because that’s how it looks. Your wife gave your friends a gift out of your shared resources. In my house, I would be totally entitled to give old friends a $40 gift without my husband arguing with me about how I’m depriving him of his rightful resources.
If you and your wife have an agreement that you cannot bestow a $40 gift of any kind on someone else (or two $20 gifts in this case) without prior spousal approval, then yes, you are entitled to the ticket. If getting spousal approval for something so small would be absurd, then you are being ridiculous, she was totally entitled to give the tickets away, and you owe her an apology.
I think it’s because you failed to actually ask a question in your OP other than “what say ye?”, so your persecution complex here is a bit perplexing. The fact that you seem completely unable to display the least bit of actual support for your wife (being capable of feeding yourself and scraping the crud off your own clothes withstanding) doesn’t help your case. But in the interest of placating your continued whining, I’ll break down your OP, once again.
You’re the crazy one here - and it’s being amplified by the fact that you’re actively trying to not see the other side of this, and are lashing out at literally every single person that says you’re in the wrong.
I’m going to pair this up with a later quote:
I don’t know what you do for a living - but you seem to be oblivious to the fact that her career is such that she cannot be successful unless there IS an actual parade being thrown (where by “parade” I mean “paying audience members”). It’s not just about there being cash in the register at the end of the day - it’s about the intangibles of there being proper marketing, promotion and buzz regarding a successful show. Giving tickets away to people unlikely to have attended in the first place all feeds into that. Giving a ticket away to one of the performer’s spouses does not.
Your wife is 100% correct here. Since you mentioned it, do you honestly see paying $20 as an inconvenience? Clearly your wife would disagree, and she has just as much say as you do. You’re being entirely disrespectful by taking this stance - sure, you *can *insist on taking the ticket. You can also insist on taking a shit on the kitchen floor - it’s just as much yours as it is hers. But that’s not what the kitchen floor is for, and that’s not what promotional tickets are for, either.
Sure - absolutely.
Nope - you’re tied for first. You keep making claims that “what’s hers is mine, what’s mine is hers”, but your actions say differently. They say, “I’m the ultimate decision maker on all things, and I need to give my consent on every transaction down to at least $20 that takes place.”
You don’t NEED this $20 - you NEED to support your wife. And I’m not saying “support your wife” in relation to supporting this decision, I’m saying it in relation to letting her do whatever the fuck she feels necessary when it comes to her fucking job.
You actually believe that, don’t you? You see absolutely no connection between this show being a success and it having an effect on your wife’s career in the long term, don’t you? And if not on her career, then on her emotional well-being. Yeah - that’s skirting the line between total hogwash and a glimmer of the truth, but you’ve completely boiled this down to JUST financial success, when in fact theatrical productions are MUCH more than that.
Tickets are a perk for doing her job. Therefore she can decide. If you knew about tickets before dinner you could have placed your claim and discussed amongst yourselves. If at the time of the offer you didn’t know about the existence of the tickets then you should have just stfu and taken it. If you wanted to discuss later about what should happen the next time then go ahead. In this instance they are hers. Live and learn. It’s harder to give away 2 solo tickets than a pair. I’m sure there are thing she gives to you that she doesn’t give to her friends so you really are ahead of the game. Leave this one alone.
I’m with the OP in the letter of the law, but not in spirit. They should have discussed it in advance, and after the wife had offered the tickets to the friends, he should have kept his mouth shut and made a mental note that the next time the conversation should go like this:
Husband: Did you get comp tickets for the show?
Wife: Yes, two.
Husband: OK, one’s for me; who should we give the other one to?
Wife: I think we should pay for you to go and we should give the comps to the Smiths. We need lots of people to come.
Husband: [Either pitches a fit or agrees]
Wife: [Either agrees that husband uses one ticket or holds firm in her belief]
/Wife: Hi, Smiths! [either] Here’s two free tickets for my show [or] I have a comp ticket for my show, so if you’re coming, one of you can get in free!