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also have curfews. If you’re grown as hell and you’re walking around rocking a promise ring, you need to go sit down and think ’bout your life. I hate having a conversation with someone when they are wearing a ring on that ring finger, and it goes like this:
    ME: “Aww, you got engaged? When?”
    HER: “Gurl, nah. It’s just a promise ring. Isn’t my sweetie the best?”
    ME: *Blinks slowly* *chuckles nervously* “Well, it was good seeing you.”
    If you’re not ready to propose, get someone a pendant or a bracelet or a trip to Fiji. Don’t be dangling what could be with a promise ring. And on the subject of stupid love decisions, someone who would accept a promise ring is also 98.2 percent more likely to get their partner’s name tatted on them after their third date. It’s science. Look it up. (But don’t, because I made it up. It’s true, though.) Tattooing the name of a significant other on you needs to come after careful deliberation, knowing that person for a long time, and taking a blood oath that forbids a breakup. It probably should not happen after that session where you had multiple toe twitches for the first time. You are not in your right mind, beloved.
    Human beings are more shortsighted than bats in the daytime. Relationships start off all hot and heavy, and that honeymoon phase has us thinking new love is perfect love. This is certainly not the time to go to a tattoo parlor to get your beloved’s name permanently affixed to your lower back. Or your bicep. Or your chest. Wait until you’ve woken up next to them in the morning and experienced their dragon breath. See if you’re still 100 percent after the first couple of times their “Good morning” curled your eyelashes before they curled your toes. See if you still like them after you’ve seen their underwear in the middle of the floor even though the laundry basket is RIGHT THERE. Do you still like them after you meet their mother, who seems unwilling to let go of her “baby”? Do you still like them after you’ve had a major argument where you wanted to cuss out them and their ancestors? What about when they were sick and acting like they got polio even though it was just a cold? What about when they were down and out and lost a job? Are you still loving bae at their worst? If you haven’t gone through any of this yet, methinks you should wait on the tattoos.
    I am a believer that you don’t know somebody until you’ve seen them handle conflict or seen them at their worst. If you love them through that, and you’ve considered it for a while, then maybe you can go get their name installed on your body. What I am not doing is getting permanent work on my body for temporary situations, like many relationships tend to be. I’m not getting nobody’s name tattooed on me, not even my own. I’m not even sure I like me enough. I can prove my love is real in other ways. I can add you to my Hulu account and give you access to my Amazon Prime so you know what we have is legit. I might even share that last spoon of rice with you to let you really know that I’m here for YOU, boo. But tattoo your name on my body? NO SIR.
    Part of me thinks people get tattoos of their partner’s name to show that they’re in it for the long run, on some ride-or-die type thing. The idea that folks need to stand by their boos in the face of any and all types of bad behavior and crap is nonsensical. It is something that gets many of us in situations that we feel guilty about backing out of because we feel like we need to be the Bonnie to their Clyde, even if we suffer tremendously for it. Like Tina and our boy Carlos. The moment Tina heard Carlos was in jail should have been the moment she bounced and considered that “relationship,” which really was a fuckbuddyship, done. Odds were, homeboy was going to be doing the time he avoided the first