New Life Tattoos?
Leave a cheater, gain a new tattoo? The Friday Challenge is to share your tattoo stories. How did you manifest your freedom?
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New life, new ink?
Today’s Fun Friday challenge comes from my husband, Mr. CL pictured here about the time I met him in all his stubbly splendor, sporting his post-infidelity divorce tattoo, a 13. (Hey, that sounds like a Sesame Street lead in. “Today’s new life has been brought to you by the Number 13!“)
He chose the number 13 because he believes that bad luck is good luck. Some of the worst things in his life led to the best things in his life.
I can’t play along today, as I have no tattoo. As a super pasty white person who sunburns within five minutes of outdoor exposure, my skin is not something I flaunt, let alone adorn with ink. But I’m not opposed. I’ve considered a few tattoos. I’d probably go with my favorite quote from the painter Alice Neel.
You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is… unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far.
I just love the idea of everything that doesn’t kill you makes you a better artist. So you might as well accept all the experiences, even the ones that nearly kill you.
I’m not sure what kind of tattoo that would make. A very wordy one. So tell me about your tattoos!
TGIF!
My Cheater Ex fancied himself a car body work expert on His cars. My cars he repaired paint and dents as cheaply as possible. Both my side mirrors were covered with black sticker paper to cover a dent. It looked OK at first, but dissolved in the sun and rain. Within a year it was pitiful and my apple red Mazca looked very sad with peeling black side mirrors.
I scrapped together some money last month and, took it to a body shop 3 weeks ago.I had both mirrors and dents repainted and repaired. I can look at my car NOW and say to myself…. girl, that car looks good!!!! 2016 apple red Mazda CX-5 with beautiful red side mirrors factory perfect. All mine to keep up.
Freedom from someone who cared plenty for his things but for me it waa second best. Never again.
My ex was like that, only the best tools and playthings for him. For me, I got used furniture, (which honestly some of it I loved). But I wanted a new couch and matching chair for my whole marriage of 20 years, but nope; too expensive. I didn’t even ask about a dishwasher, he would just say “I already have one” har, har, har.
They are just simple selfish jackasses, nothing complicated about them.
Susie Lee..at the time I felt very unselfish and generous not expect what I couldn’t get..and to be demure and fawning if he did ANYTHING for me. The WE became HIM…I must take stock that in truth,our 30 year Union would have been over if I had said I wanted more, this was unequal, I am important too. I knew abandonment was always around the corner if I edged him off the throne. I just did not believe I wasn’t loved. So I am working on my past and seeing how I wanted my marriage more than anything else.
It causes me sorrow now as I look back, at Accepting crumbs..but that was me.
I did not get a tattoo. I have told myself I will not give any space on my skin to memorialize anything that reminds me of klootzak and all this that I have been through. For me, it would be an ever present reminder. I would be looking back instead of forward. I am much better looking forward. 🙂
I move into a new place August 1. Klootzak is still here in the house though he already bought a new one. The judge has ordered the house sold. I am 3 weeks, or less if he leaves first, from finally being away from him. It has been 20 months since I filed. No tattoos for me. I would rather do a Total Recall style mind erasure.
“Klootzak is still here in the house though he already bought a new one.” MWEx – do you ever worry that he will never leave you alone? That he has a place to live yet still hangs out in the old home would make me anxiety vomit. Even after August 1 you may need seriously strong boundaries.
Also, yes Total Recall mind erasure, Men in Black flashy thing, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind sleep.
Oh my gosh, congratulations! It’s going to get so much better when he’s gone. The months I had to live with my ex were literally the worst of my life and I’ve been through since stuff but my God, that was hard. I’m so glad the end of it is in sight for you. Then healing can really start to begin.
CONGRATULATIONS on the new place and the end of your in-house prison !!!! 🎉 💃🏽 🎶
I bet your horrible endurance run in the same abode as your ex will be so, so, so helpful to others who must go through it. Alice Neel would be proud.
For months I visualize hitting the Delete button on my quarter century with covert narcissist FW and doing a mind erasure on myself! Whenever I have a memory with him in it I basically strip him out now. Usually it was me who did the event planning and socializing anyway he was getting credit by association.
Mine will say Tuesday
I got the tattoo and extra piercings and dyed my hair with blue streaks all because he said – in the past- they look stupid.
Mine is a giraffe, on my left cheek. I like giraffes and the phrase ‘having a giraffe’ means I’m having a laugh!
He asked to see it as it made me ‘sexy’ erm no.
My ex hates tattoos & body piercings and yet, he strongly encouraged me to get one after our dog died when I said I wanted to get one to memorialize her. Of course, now I know he was cheating on me, so my getting a tattoo would’ve been more justification for him. I would’ve been even more inferior, damaged goods. I did get a cute nose stud after him, not in spite of him, but because our Mayor’s wife had one & I thought it was rather charming! I could give an eff what my ex thinks. I still might get that tattoo too.
Shortly after separating from stbxh after discovering I had been a cover wife, he got his first tattoo at 64 years old across his heart that says Love Yourself First. My response, well that fits!
Wow, that’s so telling! He probably thinks it’s deep too!
My sister and I don’t really talk anymore but before the divorce we got tattoos together of lyrics from a Rolling Stones song so i have “ you can’t always get what you want” on my upper arm. It’s so fitting to me now. lol But occasionally someone gets offended by it and yells at me “that’s not true for ME! I ALWAYS GET WHAT I WANT!” The tattoo has made me realize there are a lot of entitled, spoiled, self centered, obnoxious people walking around looking normal.
My standard response when that happens is to dryly say “Someday someone you love will die and you’ll figure out really fast that’s not true.” It deflates them all immediately. Very satisfying to watch. Because even if they are personality disordered and incapable of love, they know it makes them look bad to admit that in public. Some people do seem to absorb it and say “oh god, that’s true. I didn’t think of it like that” and then they’re usually reasonably polite. But some just walk away muttering angrily under their breath. It’s definitely interesting what people tell me about themselves when i wear a shirt that shows that tattoo.
Oh, I got tattoo stories. Back when my ex and I first dated, we got tattoos on like our second or third date. Not couples or matching tattoos or anything like that, we each got our own small tattoos. We fell in love and married quickly though, it was a whirlwind romance. We had EVERYTHING in common! It was so insane to me to meet someone who was not perfect but perfect for ME! I now realize that’s a huge red flag. It’s just mirroring and personality disordered people do that. But I was 19 and didn’t know that.
About a year or two after we married, we got tattoos together. They were dragon tattoos, just large but on the upper bicep. Then in our 18th year of marriage, he came home from a trip with a tattoo on his wrist and said he wanted us to get couples tattoos… of the one he already had. It was weird. He did pick something that was relevant to me. It’s a little video game character from the first final fantasy game. We got different characters. He had been actively planning to leave me (by his own admission) for something like four or five years when he convinced me to get a tattoo with him. And it’s just above my wrist which was something that made me hesitate because it’s harder to hide. He started mocking my tattoos towards the end of our marriage, especially the dragon one. That was sh*tty.
Well, the dragon tattoo has now been covered with a colorful starry night scene featuring my three black cats. If you google starry night black cats, you’ll probably see the print I have hanging in my house that inspired it.
The video game character is still there but now that I have a wonderful new job I can afford to cover that one too. It’s a thief from the original final fantasy and I’m having a cross put on his back and his hair darkened to make him Jesus. Maybe give him a little robe. I’m going to let my tattoo artist figure it out. It will be nice to cover it.
I don’t feel the need to cover the one I got on our early date. It’s on my back shoulder and it’s just a little lizard because I was a big Doors fan in my youth, nothing to do with him really.
We had a whirlwind romance too and I did not recognize it was narc love bombing and mirroring. How young and dumb I was!
Enjoy your tattoos I’m off to Google starry night cats
i have no tattoos, but i’m not opposed to one or two. i just never thought of one i’d like to have on my skin permanently. one of my problems with tattoos is what they look like when you get old–i once was a nurse and bathed lots of old guys with faded tattoos, ink smudges. indecipherable.
i have an emotional aversion to tattoos right now. the X started tattooing in the slow- discard years, claiming he was ornamenting himself for me (??), when in reality he was having an affair with a tattooed woman from work, likely sending photos. it’s all a bit stereotypical/ridiculous and, TBH, i want nothing to do with tattoos.
i write words/images down on paper instead of on skin, and that works for me.
PS i do find japanese tattooing beautiful.
#tattooyou
I already had a lot of tattoos. Currently working on a full sleeve color realism piece (26 hours of work and counting!)
One of my cheaters was actually a tattooist. He did one small piece on me and started another. I don’t regret the piece he finished. To me, it’s not about him. It’s a cute little piece that reminds me of something hilarious (the reason I wanted it) rather than reminding me of him. The other one he started but didn’t finish I had another artist fix. I told her the situation and she had no issues finishing it. Honestly I think she did better than he would have.
Another ex, the one who decided he wanted an open marriage, got the CRINGIEST matching tattoo with his second wife (though he had I think two other simultaneous wives…). Said something like “Till Death Do We Poly.” Which aside from its complete lack of grammatical sense, now doesn’t apply because they divorced. He had multiple “wives” and she was the only one he was legally married to (others were just ceremonies) and that was the one he racked up divorce number 2 from.
Till death do they what?
“Till death do they what?” Fuck up a good thing.
I got Mehitabel the cat (from Archie & Mehitabel), Her song of freedom includes the line, ” there’s a dance in the old dame yet” and I just really loved that. More than a decade later, I’m still very pleased with her.
In the tone of Edna Mode from the Incredibles: No tattoos!
Sorry, I’m just not a tattoo guy. Or a piercing guy. I’m very reasonable with those people that feel the need to affect their bodies with those things, though. I remember the CL maxim: you don’t control anyone else, but you can certainly try to control yourself, and probably should!😂
I am also an old fashioned guy. So sue me.🤷♂️🫤
Happy Friday, CN and CL! Especially Mr. CL, for baring himself today.😁
In the midst of the pick-me dance I very nearly got her name tattooed on me. In the two years since, my thinking better and veering off that course has been a nice reminder that I have over and over made choices that have put me in a better place.
I’d had the idea in mind for decades but never thought I’d actually get a tattoo. If nothing else, the cost would have stopped me. But after spending my whole life being responsible, barely ever spending anything on myself, and then having half my savings stolen from me has pretty thoroughly killed any sense of responsibility, fiscal or otherwise.
Mine says “VIAM INVENIAM AVT FACIAM” framing a mountain range. It means “I will find a way or I will make one”. Supposedly spoken by the Carthaginian general Hannibal before driving elephants over the Alps to invade Italy and lay waste to Rome’s army. (Almost certainly not true; why would he have been speaking Latin?) On my wrist, oriented so I can read it. It’s for me.
My Chinese astrology sign is the rabbit, my FW is the snake. While he was at a family reunion that I refused to attend given we will get divorced as soon as possibly can make that happen… while he was gone I sat for a 6 hour tattoo, a hare escaping the suffocating embrace of a snake. It’s on my right thigh and my STBXH stared at it and didn’t say a word
I need a tatoo revision….on our 25th wedding anniversary trip we thought it would be fun to get matching tattoos. I have never had one before, but because we were in this forever, I decided to go with the fun and agreed. We got palm trees that form a heart when you hold hands……. awww so cute! BARF! Now I am stuck with this broken heart reminder every time I look down. Many people compliment it, and I am always triggered slightly and just smile and say uhhh yea! I would love to turn it into something else, just have not looked into places to go……
My tattoo story is a cautionary tale laced with irony.
He was always a relatively bad husband with a ghastly temper and I thought that we had been through a long “crisis” (as I saw it then…later realized our entire marriage was a crisis) which included a single affair from which we had wreckonciled. When he died suddenly, I scrambled to find order and meaning to the whole mess, so I chose to see my situation as triumphant, successful – we got through the fire and were together when he died.
Shortly after he died, I got a memorial tattoo.
Fast forward over the following 2 years, I received proof and intel that not only was that affair much worse than I realized, there were many before.
Oddly, I dont dwell on the awks tattoo…my brain doesn’t really notice it anymore. To me it is a monument to irony…
The image is his handwriting from a card where he professed love. There was a time I would literally have given a limb to actually have his love. I ongoingly believe that I prayed him into salvation and he was spared Hell from my devotion and would (likely) love me for doing so. As I learned about more cheating and processed the abuse I suffered under him, my love has died and I dont give a F if he loves me or not. To me, it’s like him speaking from the Great Beyond that he – in fact – loves me and I dont care.
If you would have told my 2005 self that I would eventually genuinely not care what he thought about anything, I would not have believed you. Meh comes on Tuesday.