Tools for Intentional Living – Dr. J. Nickens

Signs of past relationships, in the form of permanent tattoos, can be troublesome.

During the past several years I’ve noticed an increase in the number of clients who declare their regret at having gotten a tattoo of a lover’s name.   These range from a male client who had a girlfriend’s name – complete with roses and hearts  – scrawled down his entire right arm, to a young woman who had a partner’s name inked in a large sweeping arc across her lower (no, a little lower) back .

Both had regrets, because of negative stereotypes they’d had to confront.

The young man wanted to stop explaining to everyone why the name on his arm was not that of his current girlfriend.   People wondered if he had been drunk when he got tattooed, and asked endless questions aboutthe immortalized girl, who he now was trying to forget.  It was embarrassing to his  new fiancee, and he was tired of it.  He had begun wearing only long sleeved shirts, but was anxious about the coming of summer and warm weather.

The young woman was particularly troubled because a new romantic interest  (not knowing of her tattoo) had declared to her that he “would never date a girl with a tramp stamp (lower back tattoo) because that shows they are promiscuous-and the bigger the stamp the more ‘skanky’ the girl.”  His use of these derogatory terms left her feeling helpless.  She agonized over how to talk to him about it before he saw it.  And how to explain about who’s name it was?   She cried softly as she talked about how helpless and trapped she felt.

Another client had told me about a new tattoo removal process that reportedly is more effective and much less painful than other techniques.  Called Medline C6, it apparently also leaves less scarring than other removal echniques that may simply leave behind the original tattoo design but as a scar rather than a tattoo!  He was going to pursue this new removal process because he wanted to propose to his girlfriend and she had told him that she could not marry someone who had a former lover’s name tattooed on his body.

If you want to decorate your body with permanent ink art, be very careful to think through your choices, especially if you’re choosing someone else’s name, and to make a choice only when you are sober and have discussed it with close friends who might offer you valuable feedback.  Tattoos do hurt when you have them put on, but reports are that they hurt much more to take off (at least with the laser method). 

And the physical pain may be minimal compared to the emotional pain if you change your mind, or your relationship.

Click on the link below for a short YouTube video of the laser removal process:  

 http://blog-health-talk.virtuowl.com/health-and-your-body/tattoo-art/laser-tattoo-removal/