Wow, such passion and butthurt is going on in this thread. While I tend to agree something deeper is going on with the OP, the simple answer in my opinion, is that the right thing to do would be to let your wife offer the tickets to the friends, then at a later time (not in front of the friends) ask that in the future if she gets free tickets, you would appreciate it if she could reserve one of them for you. If there is some disagreement about that, at least your friends aren’t involved or aware of it.
In the long run, I think both of you were wrong. Your wife should have offered a free ticket to you before offering one (or two, if you declined) tickets to the friends. You should have let her offer the tickets and not made a big deal about it, then mentioned it to her (nicely) at some later time without creating an embarrassing situation for your wife and friends. Of course, I am assuming this was a one time problem and perhaps this is a routine issue in your relationship.
My wife often commits me to attending events with her that I don’t enjoy doing, and it is always doubly painful because I end up paying for both of us to do it since I make substantially more money than her. I can see how being a professional actress is an issue if it’s actually costing you significant money and you don’t enjoy her work. I’m not going to crucify you like so many others have done in this thread because I’ve been in situations like yours before, and reacted just like you did, but that was usually after several incidents where you were treated like a doormat and expected to fork over money for things you didn’t like or care about, and this may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I had a similar incident occur with my wife over something I felt was much larger (money wise) and I wonder how the teeming millions would react to my situation (not to derail yours). My wife’s mother is a realtor, and she was responsible for helping my wife and I, as well as her sisters and their husbands get their houses. In the case of my wife’s sisters and their husbands, they ultimately bought houses that were on the upper edge of what they could afford, and they struggled to even pay their closing costs, so her mother offered to do it for zero commission to help them both out. When we bought our house, it was well within our means, and because we had money, my wife volunteered to let her mother keep her full commission on the sale. While I agree she should get something, I hardly felt getting the whole thing was right given that the other sisters didn’t pay anything, and we had taken very little of her time in finding a house (unlike them as both were more picky). I ultimately had a nice sitdown with both of them and we agreed she would get the full commission and in exchange, she would buy us our refrigerator, washer, and dryer in exchange. So was I an asshole?
I guess to put it another way, if the friends that got your two tickets had a history of being in similar circumstances as you, but in their case they always offered one to their spouse and one to you and your wife with the expectation you’d buy the other one, would you still be getting crucified if you were simply reciprocating?
