Midlife manners
It's a crazy world out there: Etiquette rules often don't cover all the complexity of modern life. Here's our look at good manners at midlife!
The day before my second wedding, my husband-to-be and I held a small house party for our out-of-town guests. One of my friends, while technically from out of town, had made firm plans to arrive on the day of the wedding, so I didn’t send her an invitation to the day-before party. All seemed well at the wedding ceremony, but when I saw her four months later I could practically touch the frost encasing her.
The truth finally came out: She was hurt because I hadn’t invited her to the pre-wedding shindig. I protested that I already knew she wouldn’t be in Toronto that evening. “It’s the principle,” she shot back. Twelve years later, at 52, I’m still not sure who was right.
By the time we reach midlife, we’ve likely picked up a slew of new relatives, ex-relatives, steprelatives and long-distance friends along the way, leaving us with social dilemmas that Emily Post couldn’t begin to cover. Gone are the worries about managing a prickly mother-in-law; of more immediate concern is whether to invite our ex-mother-in-law (who still feels like family) to a family event. (Or wondering whether we're the monster mother-in-law ourselves!)
With vast distances separating us from many of our friends and relatives, global travel and relocation flinging very different cultures together, and an increasingly complex cast of characters following us through first and second marriages, we’re not sure whom to invite, when to attend, what to buy or how to compensate graciously for an inability to be there in person. (Take our workplace etiquette quiz!)
Etiquette versus manners
It’s not just etiquette we’re talking about — the curled-pinky stuff — but manners. The difference: “Etiquette is about convention, manners about consideration,” says Karen Mallett, president of Winnipeg-based Civility Works. In other words, good etiquette is knowing what fork to use; good manners is refraining from pointing out that your host is using the wrong one. (Want to weigh in on some etiquette dilemmas? Here are three to solve.)
Here’s a taste of the confusion many of us feel these days. “On several occasions over the past year, I’ve wondered which in-laws and exes to send gifts to and how much to spend,” says 50-year-old Brenda Kropp of Langley, B.C. “I couldn’t decide whether to buy a gift for my kids to give their dad — my ex — for Christmas. In the end, I spent about $100 on a leather jacket for him but didn’t put my name on the gift because it might be awkward. I wasn’t too sure of the protocol, and there isn’t a Manners for Exes book to consult.”
