7/6/11
Dream Interpretation: I’m Mad About My Boyfriend’s New Tattoo

photo via Flickr

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means. This week, a reader asks Lauri:

I had this very strange dream about a pool party that a bunch of my friends and I all went to together. My boyfriend and I came separately. I arrived first and when he got there, we started playing in the pool and hanging out. We socialized with others, etc.

When we got out of the pool, I noticed a medium-sized yellow tattoo under his right shoulder (front of his body in the same line as his shoulder blades). It was bright and stood out. In real life, he doesn’t have any tattoos. It said something that didn’t really mean anything to me. In fact, I can’t really remember what it said. Spyx? Or something equally obscure.

I asked when he got it and he said it was recent. I got extremely upset with him that he didn’t tell me about it and started acting really cold to him. In reality, neither my boyfriend nor I mind the idea of tattoos for ourselves or on each other. We just haven’t figured out what we want to get inked yet. And plus, dream me clearly didn’t have any idea about the fact that you can get an ink removal these days, or she wouldn’t have been so upset. That’s what I mean, it’s so weird, the real me wouldn’t have given monkeys!

We continued socializing and I became increasingly cold since he was not getting the point that I was upset. I believe I hit or pushed him lightly to get a final point across as we were sitting on a wall. I jumped off the wall and left angry.

Lauri: The pool party most likely represents “the dating pool”, which is why there was so much socializing going on in the pool. You and your boyfriend getting out of the pool is connected to you and your boyfriend becoming exclusive.

At that point, you notice his yellow tattoo. That is awfully interesting. The tattoo is not about you guys actually getting tattoos but rather symbolizes something you think may be a permanent situation with your boyfriend. The fact that the tattoo is yellow is a clue. Yellow in dreams usually means fear. Is he beginning to show a fear of commitment? Or does he have trust issues? What is it, in your eyes, he seems fearful of lately? He tells you he recently got the tattoo which may mean he has recently begun to show signs of some sort of fear in waking life. The upset you feel in the dream is directly connected to something that has been upsetting you in real life.

At the end of the dream you jump off the wall you are both sitting on. As I always say, the ending of the dream is usually where the main message can be found. That wall either represents an emotional wall that has become an issue in the relationship or it is representative of a boundary, a limit perhaps that he or you will not cross. I think jumping off that wall at the end is your dreaming mind’s suggestion to lay off this particular issue that was upsetting you as you may have realized you weren’t getting anywhere with it, you had “hit a wall” so to speak. Sometimes the best advice we can ever get comes from our own dreaming mind.

Response from dreamer: Interesting. The only thing I can think of that it might be is where we are in our lives. We’ve been together for almost 8 years. We’re very much in love, our relationship is great and eventually we plan to get married though we’re not in any rush. However, it was recently brought up 1-2 months ago (almost jokingly) that I need to start making more money. He’s successful and I’m very happy for him and I realize that of course he doesn’t want to marry a deadbeat. I have a full time job, but it’s not nearly as much as I’d like to be making or anywhere near what he’s making. We don’t talk about it seriously because it’s still early in my career. There’s plenty of time for me to find new, better paying opportunities. I want to be successful too and I’m glad he wants me to be too. I’m not in love with my entry level job and I’m working on finding something different. I guess in the back of my mind, I wonder if it’s enough for him to not want to marry me down the line.

Lauri: Yes, I am sure this fear of YOURS is what the dream is connected to. It is your own fear you are placing or transferring onto him, which is why he had the tattoo… not you. And I think your dream is showing you that you need to get off this train of thought just as you got off the wall at the end of the dream because that train of thought really is a wall… it’s not going to get you anywhere.

Got a dream you want Lauri to analyze? Click here to submit it. Anonymity guaranteed! And don’t forget: you can get access to Lauri’s Instant Dream Decoding Dictionary on her site.