Tattoo gets under her skin

Dear Amy: I am a 47-yearold woman. My husband, “Bart,” 50, and I have been together for eight years. He’s a firefighter in a large city.

Bart has several tattoos on his left arm (a “sleeve”). His tattoos are tasteful and well thought out.

Whenever he considers a new tattoo, he takes his ideas and rough sketch to his tattoo artists. He then carefully reconsiders the design and placement on this arm.

Two days ago, Bart told me he was going to get some touch-ups done on his tattoos. This is not unusual.

When he got home, he not only had the touch-ups done but a brand-new tattoo.

This new tattoo is approximately 8 inches long, starting at his neck and going right down the middle of his chest. It is not the tattoo that was shocking to me but the placement of it.

The tattoos on his arm never bothered me. But I cried for hours the first night he had his new one.

He asked if we could talk about it, but I knew I would react in a way that was not going to be positive for the relationship, so I just said, ”I can’t talk about it yet.”

I am now on day three, and my feelings about this have not changed. I am still visibly upset.

I know this is permanent. I am just going to have to get over it, but I don’t know how to explain my feelings to Bart because I am struggling to understand them.

I know that if he’d had this tattoo when I met him, I never would have gone on the first date — I just find it so unattractive.

Right now, I do not want him touching me and we are barely speaking to each other. I know I have wounded his pride/ego. What should I do?

Teary

Dear Teary: You say you don’t want to wound your husband’s ego, but days of silence punctuated by crying will be worse for him, his ego and your relationship than the truth.

This is his body. He has the right to adorn it. But the thing about a tattoo on the neck and down the breastbone is that others will look at it more often than he does. And you, arguably, will see it more often than anyone.

So, tell him: “I’m not really sure why this has upset me so much, but it is the placement of it that is triggering my emotions.”

Perhaps the ink’s presence near his pulsing jugular, heart and lungs remind you that this physically brave man (whose job is to save people, after all), is actually extremely vulnerable.

You are vulnerable too; be honest about that.

Dear Amy: In a supermarket, if the checkout lane has two positions across an aisle from each other, and only one position is manned, the line forms for that position.

If the second position subsequently opens up, should all customers remain in the original line or is it OK if some customers to filter across and form a line for the newly opened position?

Wondering

Dear Wondering: I’m assuming you might be one of my extra-polite Canadian readers, because it’s hard to imagine any American standing in a queue when there’s an available cashier.

Many times a cashier opening up will say, “I’ll take the next customer over here,” and the next person in the original line will shift over and start a new queue.

Sometimes the last person in the original line will race forward to take the first slot in the new queue, but this is bad form.