Well, you asked for opinions, and everyone has agreed with your wifes point of view. I think the big contention is that you objected to your wifes gift in front of your friends. If it was deceided before hand to give your friends one ticket and you the other, I don’t think it would be a problem.
If I were your friends, and saw that 30 second spat, it would have made me VERY uncomfortable to accept the tickets at all.
Have you re-thought your position at all?
I’m sorry my post came off that way; I’m typing slower these days & quite honestly some other people said it a lot better & more beautifully. Of Course you love your wife. Of Course she loves you back. Of Course you support her.
Yes, its $20. But it will make her Happy! If its your wife’s happiness vs $20, it just seemed simple to me, but there are a million variables that I couldn’t possibly know. In the end, we trust your judgement & support you; you know that.
No, she’s not a slut. No, you aren’t either. There might be a million reasons to be angry at my POV. My overly-simplistic view was just that you both have a good thing going & are Happy.
Damn me to Hell for wanting you both to keep what you have & stay that way…
Frankly, I would have thought you’d been here long enough to know that Dopers are all armchair psychologists. Unlike most people here, I take your word for it when you say you’re a good husband. I’m sticking to my original response, which was:
I also agree with your wife that Bob Ducca’s comment is assholish, indefensible and probably merits a warning.
These comments are out of line. You don’t have to be on the OP’s side in this matter, but you do have to post civilly. No more of this, please.
Well, that’s the recipe for a happy marriage! 
I have a few thoughts on this:
If I were you, I’d be so excited for my wife, I’d probably buy a bunch of tickets and give them out to my friends, so that everyone can come and see her in the play.
You can’t very well give a couple one free ticket, because what that really is is the gift of an obligation to buy a second one. You have to give them both, or don’t offer them at all.
Since they were already offered, you can’t take them back. And you CERTAINLY can’t object to the gift right in front of them. Good lord!
Seriously, what’s hers is NOT necessarily yours.
Were the tickets for general admission or were they for two adjacent seats? Just wondering if this might be another (obvious) reason why his wife did what she did.
How is it helping her for you to feed yourself?
Good point (maybe).
This does not have to be any more complicated than what I said before. Give. It’s good for you. If I need to spell out all the subtle nuances that that means, then there’s no point in bothering. It really is just that simple.
Come on, man. The snark in this thread notwithstanding, there’s been some decent answers to your question. Maybe you’re just having a mental block of some kind, and I never got the impression that you are a major asshole from anything else, so listen. You are wrong, but it shouldn’t be a big deal. It isn’t about you being first or anything, either. They’re just tickets to some thing your wife does. Give them away to your friends, let them enjoy it because they’re your friends, and go or don’t go as you see fit. Sometimes it’s just nice to do stuff like that for your people without it meaning something deeper about where you fit in your wife’s world.
You know why you’re wrong? Because you would ultimately be happier if you didn’t question this situation in the first place. It really is that simple.
Oh yes, and someone upthread mentioned that raising an internal eyebrow is perfectly fine and normal, but reasoning it out in your own head is what should have happened.
Wouldn’t it be AWESOME if it’s A Streetcar Named Desire!?!?!?!?!?
GA. The house capacity was about 50 people, and the seats were fold-out plastic chairs. We haven’t made the big time yet.
::sigh:: To recap, I asked “Who should get the tickets?” and the response was “Support your wife.” Setting aside the fact that such an answer doesn’t actually respond to the question, the thread then sidetracked into what ‘support’ actually entails. ‘Support,’ to me, is anything that makes her able to do the show. Doing her chores is one such method. One such chore is doing the cooking, which can unflatteringly be called feeding me.
The fact that this is a relatively simple task does not change the fact that it’s supporting her, nor does the fact that it’s the default situation anyway. If I planned to watch our hypothetical infant while she went shopping with the gals, but I got a fever and she had to stay home with the kid, you know what that’s called? Supporting your husband. I don’t know why people think I’m asking for rose petals at my feet for feeding myself. I never said anything to that effect.
Yes, it is simple. Yes, it is a good rule. But it doesn’t answer my question of how to distribute two free tickets to three people. The same rule could apply to any of the three of us.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
2) You can’t very well give a couple one free ticket, because what that really is is the gift of an obligation to buy a second one. You have to give them both, or don’t offer them at all.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you! At last, we have a reasoned answer that’s not sexist that actually addresses the question and isn’t unsolicited advice on party manners!
The least you could do is stop repeating bullshit like this. No - you did not ask “who should get the tickets?”, you asked* “am I right or is my wife?”.
If you’re going to refuse to stop digging, I’d recommend that you alter course and start trying to dig up.
*Actually, you didn’t even ask that. Go back and read your OP - it’s more like “I am unable to understand my wife’s viewpoint, please help me out.”
You should pay for the ticket.
Money is fungible. Several people have asked what I think is the only relevant question–in your marriage, would a $20 gift given without prior consultation be ok? Could your wife have picked up a pizza on the way over to visit them one day, or bought the woman a great blouse she saw on sale that was just her style, or paid for the movie tickets because it was just easier that way? Would those things have bothered you? Would they have been not putting you first? If not, then why is this $20 different than that $20?
:dubious: How is “You can’t very well give a couple one free ticket, because what that really is is the gift of an obligation to buy a second one. You have to give them both, or don’t offer them at all,” not a discussion of manners?
No, doing the cooking for two people might be construed as a chore or part of the division of labor. Fending for yourself when you’re on your own is being a grownup.
You’re welcome. But that wasn’t the only answer that wasn’t sexist, addressed the question, and wasn’t unsolicited advice on party manners. I saw a whole bunch of them in this thread.
Yup.
You start off the OP by clearly stating, as your first sentence, “I’m in a conundrum in which I completely fail to see the other side’s view of this, so I need you all to tell me if I’m the crazy one here.” (Bolding added by me.)
After a long ramble about how you can’t possibly be asked to pay because you’re the husband and you have dibs on the household goods and blah blah blah and screw the best friends because of course they like her so why should they get the tickets, you wrap up with how you shouldn’t have to pay and her friends are way down the priority list for tickets, and…
Your only actual question is “What say ye?”
Now you are interpreting that as meaning “Who should get the tickets?”, period. Many of us interpreted that as “What’s your opinion on what happened?” - especially in light of your first sentence.
In the future, spell out the question precisely rather than putting a pithy “What say ye?” at the end of an OP which starts off with a general “Am I crazy?”-type request.