I Had to Make Toast on a Momentous Night in My Career. I Forgot to Thank One Very Important Person.

Dear Prudence What’s the big deal? Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by shelma1/Getty Images Plus and Ivanko_Brnjakovic/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this edition, Tony Ho Tran, a Slate senior editor, will be filling in as Prudie. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Prudence, I recently completed a major years-long project for work. This is an important milestone for the company and for my career. We had a catered dinner at a hotel ballroom to launch the project and celebrate everyone’s contribution. It wasn’t a lavish black-tie event, but it was a nice night out, and we were allowed to bring guests. I invited my wife and both sets of our parents. During the toasts, everyone was encouraged to stand up and say something. I thanked my team and my co-workers for everything they did. The next day, my parents-in-law called and told me off for not thanking my wife. A lot of other people thanked their spouses, so I guess they expected me to as well. I didn’t even think of it at the time. We weren’t told to write speeches in advance. And there’s another part I didn’t want to tell them. My wife wasn’t very supportive about the project at all. She wasn’t a naysayer, but she was completely indifferent. She didn’t want to talk about it because it’s something she finds very boring, and she’s always been bad at faking interest. She doesn’t even ask me how my day at work was most of the time. It hurt at the beginning of our marriage, but she’s a great wife otherwise, so I’ve gotten used to just not talking about work with her. So yeah, I didn’t think to say thank you for supporting the project. I don’t think she cares about the dinner or the toasts, but her family is really getting bent out of shape and saying I humiliated her. What do I say? —Forgot the Wife Dear Forgot the Wife, I’ve been working on a book for a little while now (OK, a very long while), and I asked my fiancée if she’d be mad if I won an award for it but didn’t thank her in my acceptance speech. She mulled it over before saying, “Depends on who else you thanked.” If I only thanked my family, it’d probably be OK. But if I decided to completely torpedo my relationship and sing the praises of one of my exes but not her, then I’d have some trouble. You’re not obligated to thank your wife in an impromptu toast for your work project. Nor do your in-laws get to decide that you humiliated her because other people thanked their spouses. We’re still missing one crucial voice in this, though: What does your wife think? Both you and your in-laws seem to be making some big assumptions about how she feels. Before you mount a defense of your toast, check in with the person everyone’s arguing about. Just because your wife has been indifferent about your work doesn’t necessarily mean leaving her out didn’t hurt her feelings. And finding your project boring isn’t necessarily the same as being unsupportive. She might have supported you in other ways: picking up chores, running errands, and doing other quiet yet crucial work while you focused on a years-long undertaking. (There’s actually a card game about this very topic.) If that happened, it deserves recognition. Or she might simply have wanted to feel included in an important moment in your life. Talk to your wife. Ask her, “How did you feel about the dinner and my toast?” If she wasn’t bothered, great! You can tell your in-laws, “We talked, and she’s comfortable with how the evening went. There’s nothing here we need to resolve.” If she was hurt, ask her why and listen. You might gain an appreciation for support you’ve overlooked, or understand why the acknowledgment mattered to her. There’s room, too, for a separate conversation about how her lack of interest in your work has hurt you. She doesn’t have to find every detail fascinating to show interest in something that matters to you. That’s worth discussing—but don’t turn this conversation into a tally of whether she earned a thank you. —Tony Classic Prudie My sister got married recently. Some weeks before the big day, she pulled me aside and asked me to dye my bright blue and purple hair a more innocuous color so that I wouldn’t stand out too much. She wouldn’t listen to reason as to how I love my hair, nor as to how the process of bringing it to a more natural color would be difficult, expensive, and damaging. At the suggestion of a friend, I invested in an excellent honey-brown human hair wig, similar to my actual hair texture and length. Advice Dear Prudence Family Marriage