DEAR ABBY: I’m a mostly happily married wife and mother. I love tattoos. When I was younger, I was engaged to my soulmate. His name is tattooed on my wrists in honor of the love we shared. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident.
Several years later, I met and married my husband, “Brett.” When we fight he brings up the tattoos. He says they’re “disrespectful” of him and I should get rid of them. It upsets me because I got the tattoos before I ever met Brett, so how can they be disrespectful? Am I being unreasonable, or should my husband back off? – ILLUSTRATED WOMAN IN COLORADO
DEAR ILLUSTRATED WOMAN: The tattoos are in no way disrespectful to your husband. They are the same body art you had when he married you, and if he didn’t complain back then, he shouldn’t now. When you’re fighting and Brett tells you to get rid of them, he’s doing it to hurt you because he knows they are meaningful and he’s trying to get under your skin. Insist on dealing with the subject at hand and don’t take the bait.
DEAR ABBY: I’d like to know if there’s any way to stop my mother-in-law from inviting herself to every birthday party and graduation our children have. They are pre-teen and teenagers now. She has done this for years, and it often doesn’t end well. Because they are older, they prefer to hang out with their friends, do sleepovers, etc.
Because she insists on staying the night, it’s hard to have room for sleepovers. She complains if she has to sleep on the couch, and she also has a fit if she’s not getting enough attention from the kids because they’d rather be with their friends and not her the whole time.