DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my husband travels for business, he sees nothing wrong with going to happy hour or dinner, including alcoholic drinks, with single female colleagues. And picking them up from the train station, airport, etc., and texting them with emoji -- mostly regarding work, but sometimes not. He says these colleagues are just “someone to hang with after work.”

This has always made me feel very uncomfortable. Am I wrong to feel this way? Please help resolve this dispute. We’ve been married for 32 years with three grown children. We have a good marriage, and thankfully are still in love.

GENTLE READER: And yet you haven’t built up any trust? If you go to a male dentist, is your husband worried that you will start kissing as soon as your mouth is no longer numb?

Miss Manners suggests that you take a look at the workaday world. Whether or not you are in it, you must see that it contains all genders. You might also have heard that although cordial working relationships are encouraged, people who don’t know when to stop are apt to run into terrible professional trouble. Men who are fearful of false accusations -- and Miss Manners has heard from many of them -- should not shun their female colleagues, which has professional consequences for all, but provide their own chaperones.

The way to resolve your dispute is to apologize for your lack of trust, and to stop trying to make a fool of him for being the person who is forbidden to mix with his colleagues on business trips.

Unless he is a proven philanderer. In that case, you would best keep him under lock and key, because temptation is everywhere.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a very smart niece and nephew who live out of state. I try to send them gifts that they would like. This year, I sent them a message on social media that I would be sending them gifts via a courier service, and that they should watch for them.

Needless to say, I never received an acknowledgment or thank-you for the message or gifts. I don’t know if they received the gifts or not. Is there a way to convey to them that although I love them and enjoy sending them gifts, I find their silence very rude and disrespectful?

GENTLE READER: What is it that you enjoy about sending presents to people who won’t even acknowledge them?

This is the era of feedback, as your niece and nephew are surely aware. It is impossible to go to the drugstore for an aspirin without then receiving an email asking how you enjoyed the experience. So your relatives have no excuse for withholding feedback from you.

If you don’t want to accept silence as negative feedback and stop throwing good presents after badly received ones, Miss Manners suggests that you mimic a typical commercial plea: “Your feedback is important to me. Please take a minute to let me know if you enjoyed receiving that present.”

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: What is the proper action when a guest accidentally breaks an item, other than apologizing and offering to replace it?

What does a guest do if the item is of great sentimental value, but of little or no monetary value? A replacement item will not have the same sentimental value as the original. How about if the item’s monetary value is higher than what the guest can afford? Or if the item is part of a set: Does the guest just buy a replacement for the broken item, or an entire new set? Will cash work (tacky, true, but the item may have been bought overseas and not available locally)?

What does a host do when presented with the replacement item? Is a simple “thank you” all that is needed?

These are not theoretical questions: I have broken a fine bone china mug out of a set of six mugs, each with a different design. My hostess did not inherit this set, but it is antique, and, like most everything in her house, there is a story about how and when she bought it.

I want to do the proper thing; I have apologized profusely and offered to replace it. She has laughed it off and said not to worry about it.

GENTLE READER: Clumsy guests should do the maximum amount of groveling -- and make reasonable attempts at replacing broken items -- without themselves becoming the nuisance. You do not wish to be a friend, Miss Manners warns, whom hosts are willing to chuck, if only to get you to stop harassing them.

Gracious hosts need only thank their destructive guests for their efforts and do their best to reassure them that for anything less valuable than a statue, it was old and they were looking to get rid of it anyway.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Each Christmas, we host a party for friends and neighbors. This year, our neighbors brought along their adult daughter and her partner, who were visiting from out of state.

They arrived intoxicated and were very loud and obnoxious, making rude comments to other guests. Some of our invited guests left early as a result, as did her parents. We’re uncertain about how to address this problem without alienating our neighbors.

We certainly don’t want a repeat performance next year! What is the appropriate way to handle party guests who behave in a rude or disorderly manner?

GENTLE READER: When even their own parents give up on them and go home, it is a problem indeed.

Miss Manners suggests that next year, you enlist their help: “Your children seemed to have such a wonderful time at our party, but in our quiet neighborhood, we feel ill-equipped to keep up with them. Perhaps they would be happier with a livelier set.”

With unrelated misbehaving adults, you may say the same, omitting -- if heavily insinuating -- the part about being children.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: Would you enlighten us as to when children’s tables are appropriate?

My brother and I are 17 and 15, and we were required to eat a holiday meal in a separate room with the host couple’s 7-year-old son. We have never shown our relatives anything but good table manners, and are always respectful and reserved as guests. This arrangement insulted us, but was it a breach of etiquette?

GENTLE READER: Hosts faced with limited room at the dining room table are forced to make a cut-off age for the children’s table -- and Miss Manners is guessing that in this case, it was 18.

The good news is that this is a problem that you will soon age out of -- at which point Miss Manners will good-naturedly entertain your complaints about the boring adults, and your desire to return to the children’s table so that you can gossip about them.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: At family gatherings, everyone prepares several dishes for a buffet-style meal. My sister-in-law will visually assess what I put on my dinner plate. She then verbally calls me out in front of everyone if she feels I did not take enough of (or any) of the food she prepared.

At one gathering, she told me I have to try what she made and I cannot leave her house until I do. How do I respond to such controlling behavior in front of all the relatives and guests?

GENTLE READER: “Thank you, I am full. I wasn’t planning on spending the night, but if you are insisting, perhaps I can have it for breakfast.” And then hope that this public response garners laughs, and not an invitation.

Miss Manners further recommends that in a less heated moment, you suggest that if your sister-in-law feels that it is so important for her guests to eat only what she cooks, then she should not be giving potluck dinners.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I sent a floral delivery to my sister-in-law for Christmas. She responded to my husband (as she always does) by text, saying, “Thank you for thinking of me, the floral tree is pathetic! Demand your money back. Picture to follow.”

The photo was never sent. Since it is too late for us to fix it, I would rather not know that my thoughtfulness failed. How does one respond to that?

GENTLE READER: While your sister-in-law was brusque and failed to follow through, Miss Manners does not condemn the sentiment. If there is, as you say, something to be done about it, she would think you would want to know if a present was sent damaged. You could have responded, “I am so sorry it did not please you. If you can send us that picture, we will be sure to get in touch with the florist and ask for a replacement, on the grounds that it was not up to their usual standard.”

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)