Woman Calls Husband 'Selfish' After He Gets Tattoo To Honor Their Daughter Without Her Approval
The problem is not what you'd expect.
bbernard / Shutterstock Tattoos are no small endeavor, as they by design last a lifetime. You spend weeks prior to the appointment online researching designs and locations to get it just right. So, when a man took to Reddit about his initial plan to avoid a sensitive area in a new tattoo commemorating his daughter’s birth, many in his life agreed with his plan, including his wife.
After his tattoo artist’s creative recommendations took the tattoo in another direction, however, the husband called his wife after the fact. That's where things went south.
His wife freaked out after being shown the new tattoo honoring their daughter.
In the Reddit post, he details the experience of being persuaded to cover an area he’d originally planned to avoid. While it’s clear the man’s tattoo is nothing vulgar or offensive, he is desperate to get perspective from commenters on where he went wrong.
After initially planning to go smaller, the man opted to cover more area after the artist recommended it.
To paint the picture of his tattoo experience, the man writes he’d been “planning to get the tattoo on [his] chest to commemorate becoming a father.” He’d initially planned to avoid his nipple area, as he heard it was an unbearably painful spot for a tattoo. But after arriving at the shop, the tattoo artist quickly recommended that he cover his nipple, saying it “wouldn’t look right…it would stand out if he didn’t tattoo the whole area.”
“I opted to go with his wishes,” he admits, “and have my nipple tattooed.”
After the tattoo was over and he wasn’t concerned about the pain any longer, he excitedly left the shop to show his wife the new art. However, it wasn’t until he called her to talk about the experience that he realized he’d made a mistake.
The tattoo turned into the ‘biggest fight’ the couple had ever had — despite the wife’s initial approval.
“I told my wife that wasn’t going to be the case when I went in,” he said about having to tattoo his nipple, “[the tattoo] blew up into the biggest fight we ever had.”
Shocked by her seemingly sudden anger, the man wrote she “had never told [him] how adamant she was about hating a tattooed nipple. If she had — I would have never had it done.”
“She only agreed with my initial thoughts that I wanted to avoid the area,” the man admitted after trying to dissect the argument.
The wife complained the tattoo was ‘bachelor behavior,’ despite it honoring their newborn daughter.
He was a selfish man acting like a bachelor — at least according to his wife.
“She said I should’ve called her immediately when the plan was being changed so she could give her input,” the man wrote. “She then told me how she wasn’t going to be attracted to me anymore because I’m uneven now — she just hates tattooed nipples.” But does she have a point?
Desperate for answers, the man asks the commenters to help him piece together a situation that took a sharp left. “Not sure what to do at this point,” he writes, “or if there is anything to do. Our relationship was great and full of laughter — now it’s cold. I even felt awkward picking up my baby this morning because the tattoo is for her.”
Perhaps the tattoo is not the real reason for their fight.
“I think there’s a bigger problem behind the outburst,” one comment writes, “most likely something else is bothering her and she decided to let it all out over the tattoo.”
After one commenter asks the man to provide more context for the outburst, he admitted that “he had issues with communication — she wanted more input from me. I’ll admit I’ve had a problem with making decisions without final consultation with her.”
After continuing to respond to comments suggesting “his wife’s hormones” are the root cause of the fight, many turn on the freshly tattooed man for being ignorant about his relationship.
“A word to the wise: do not attribute any of this to hormones — it’s the same thing as saying ‘you don’t really feel that way,’ but in different words,” one commenter suggests.
In diving deeper into the comments, it seems many commenters forget about the entire fight in general — “Came here for the comments. Found an awful tattoo. Laser that [expletive] off and do something else.”
Ultimately, the larger issue stems from communication. Regardless of how much she detests the location of his new ink, the conflict is directly related to his choice to change what they had agreed on, without consulting her first. According to marriage.com, communication lays the groundwork for mutual respect and conflict resolution in any relationship, but most importantly in romantic relationships. All he needed to do was make a quick phone call before agreeing to the ill-placed tattoo and he could have saved himself a lot of physical pain and marital anguish.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a news and entertainment writer at YourTango. They focus on everything from pop culture analysis to human interest stories. Connect with them on Instagram or TikTok.