When getting tattoos, it’s really important for everyone involved to follow any and all instructions given to the letter. We’ve all seen body art horror stories of what happens when the tattoo artist goes off-script and ends up branding someone’s skin with something you wouldn’t want sticking up on your fridge let alone inked on your body for the rest of your life.
Generally, the person getting the tattoo knows what’s what, though. Except, that is, in the case of TikTok user @alazahxf who claimed to have taken her boyfriend’s request that they get matching tattoos a bit too literally. Her partner’s idea, it seems, was for the pair to get each other’s name tattooed on their hands and/or wrists. But his girlfriend had other ideas. “My man wanted to get matching tats,” she wrote. “He got my name, & I got my name… now he mad.”
Sorry to the boyfriend whose tattoo dreams have been dashed, but it looks like everyone on the app is on alazahxf’s side on this one, as they’re admiring her commitment to prioritizing her sense of self above her partner’s wishes. “Self love is more important duh,” reads the top comment, while others didn’t see what the boyfriend’s problem was. “At least you’re matching,” one pointed out. Some even offered a tip on how she could fix it to appease her partner: “You could do like (your name) + (his name).” Honestly, though, the TikToker probably has the right idea here. You know she’s thinking long-term. “MAYBE one day y’all break up while u have his name on ur wrist,” wrote one wise, if syntactically confused, commenter, “but yourself won’t leave you 4ever.”
But, wait, it seems it’s not alazahxf who’s guilty of taking things too literally, it’s the rest of us. If you drag your eyes to her caption, it becomes clear that the TikToker was stretching the truth just a tad and the arm draped over her shoulder in the video actually belongs to her “homegirl.” It looks like the pair of female friends deliberately decided to get the same tattoo.
Some may feel mad at alazahxf for duping us, but actually we’ll let her off the hook as it’s much more worthwhile to commemorate a close friendship with matching tats than it is a romantic relationship. Real ride-or-die friends are harder to find in this world than you might think. A July 2023 study found that, on average, we make a total of just 29 real friends across our lives. Even then, only 5% of them manage to last long enough to be called lifelong pals.
TikTok users have perfected the art of getting their sweet revenge on their partners when they’ve done something to deserve it — like gifting them the most savage anniversary present — so, even if alazahxf’s tattoo trick turned out to be untrue, maybe this is something the people of the app should file away for later in case they have a boyfriend who likes body art and may have got overly familiar with someone else’s body.
