When ‘Happy Anniversary’ Feels Awkward: Miss Manners, Modern Marriage, and What to Say Instead
Miss Manners recently weighed in on an uncomfortably modern dilemma: what do you say to a friend on her wedding anniversary when her marriage looks like it’s falling apart? In a culture where Instagram demands cheerful posts and group texts expect celebratory emojis, the Washington Post etiquette column offered a quieter, more humane alternative—one that says a lot about how we navigate friendship, privacy, and performance in 2025.
The Miss Manners Column: A Quick Recap
In the Washington Post column “Miss Manners: ‘Happy anniversary! Are you still together?’”, a reader writes in with a very 2020s kind of worry. She was in her friend’s wedding a year ago. Now the first anniversary is approaching, and the marriage—based on the last six months—is clearly not going well. The reader wants to be supportive, but doesn’t want to lob a cheery “Happy anniversary!” into what may be a minefield.
The heart of the question: is there a polite, compassionate way to acknowledge the date without pretending everything is fine—or cruelly reminding her friend of what isn’t?
The etiquette problem here isn’t the anniversary. It’s the implication that you are evaluating the state of someone else’s marriage.
As usual, Miss Manners uses a simple social ritual to hint at a larger point: other people’s relationships are not public property, even if they often feel like they are.
What Miss Manners Actually Suggests
Miss Manners’ response, in distilled form, is: don’t make her marriage your project. You don’t need to interrogate the anniversary, you don’t need to fix anything, and you definitely don’t need to perform insight about how “it doesn’t seem like the marriage is going well.”
- Avoid assumptions: The friend’s marriage may be troubled, complicated, or simply private. From the outside, you don’t know enough to narrate it.
- Skip the spotlight: Wording like “Are you still together?” turns a greeting into an evaluation, which is the opposite of courteous.
- Keep it gentle and neutral: A simple “Thinking of you today—hope you’re doing okay” is often kinder than a glittery “Happy anniversary!!!”
The underlying etiquette principle is old-fashioned in the best way: don’t pry, don’t presume, and don’t use someone else’s vulnerable moment as an excuse to showcase your emotional intelligence.
Anniversaries in the Age of Instagram
The tension in this column comes from a very specific cultural moment. Wedding anniversaries used to be semi-private: maybe dinner out, maybe a card. Now they’re often content—a carousel post, a re-share of the wedding video, a caption about “one year down, forever to go.”
Against that backdrop, silence can feel pointed. If everyone else is commenting hearts and champagne emojis, the one friend who doesn’t chime in thinks she’s committing social negligence. That’s the anxiety behind the letter: not just “what’s polite?” but “what will my silence mean in a world where everything is publicly documented?”
Modern etiquette isn’t about rehearsed lines; it’s about knowing when not to make someone’s private struggle part of the public script.
Miss Manners’ answer is almost subversive in 2025: you are not obligated to participate in the performance. Courtesy can be quiet. Care doesn’t have to be hashtagged.
So What Do You Actually Say? Practical, Polite Options
If you’re in the same position as the letter-writer, you have a few tactful paths that still feel human, not robotic.
- Keep it low-key and person-focused
Instead of “Happy anniversary!”, try something like, “Thinking of you today—hope you’re doing okay.” This acknowledges the date without grading the marriage.
- Reach out before or after the date
A simple “Hey, how are you doing these days? Want to grab coffee sometime?” can be more supportive than a specific anniversary note.
- Let her lead
If she posts a big anniversary tribute, a short “Wishing you the best” is fine. If she’s silent, that may be your cue to check in privately rather than comment publicly.
- When in doubt, skip the milestone
You are not rude for not marking every anniversary, especially if the relationship is clearly strained. A consistently kind friendship matters far more than one perfectly worded text.
Why This Miss Manners Column Still Works
As a piece of entertainment and advice, this Miss Manners entry does what the column does best: it takes a niche social anxiety and uses it to illuminate broader norms. A few strengths stand out.
- Cultural fluency: The question reflects real 2020s friendship dynamics—post-wedding comedowns, unstable first years of marriage, and the pressure to know “the right thing” to text.
- Restraint as rebellion: In an era of oversharing, the column’s core value—discretion—lands as almost radical.
- Focus on boundaries: It gently pushes back against the idea that intimacy means access to every detail of someone’s relationship.
If there’s a limitation, it’s that etiquette columns rarely dig into the emotional labor behind these questions—the way women, especially, are expected to be endlessly attuned to everyone else’s feelings and optics. But even without that explicit critique, the advice lowers the temperature: you don’t have to perform; you just have to avoid making things worse.
Related Reads and Where to Find the Column
If this particular dilemma hits close to home, it’s worth reading the full Washington Post piece for the exact wording and tone of Miss Manners’ answer, as well as the reader’s original letter.
- Miss Manners at The Washington Post (official site)
- “Sex and the City” on IMDb – for a pop-culture counterpoint where relationship milestones are dissected in public, not tiptoed around.
- Social Qs at The New York Times – another modern etiquette column that often tackles friendships, family obligations, and awkward milestones.
Conclusion: When Kindness Means Saying Less
The Miss Manners column about the not-so-happy anniversary works because it quietly re-centers an unfashionable idea: you don’t have the right to narrate someone else’s relationship. In a world primed for hot takes and carefully crafted captions, the most elegant move is sometimes the simplest—acknowledge your friend as a person, not as a character in a marriage plot you’re supposed to applaud.
If you’re ever unsure, this column offers a timeless rule that ages well, online and off: when the milestone is complicated, opt for gentleness, privacy, and the smallest true thing you can honestly say.
