Photograph: Timothy Kirman/EyeEm/Getty Images

Immediately after the most tragic breakup of our time — and possibly even before — Pete Davidson and Ariana Grande began roofing upward the multiple tattoos they'd gotten together in their brief but glorious stint as a couple. Several (though not all) of these tattoos were matching: a cloud, the acronym "H2GKMO" (which reportedly stands for "honest to god knock me out," and the discussion "REBORN." Getting a matching tattoo with a significant other is often frowned upon, considered a "kiss of death" for the relationship (see also: the proper noun tattoo, à la Jax'southward cursive, inner arm "Stassi"). Tattoos are (mostly) permanent, and most relationships aren't, and so what happens if y'all interruption upwards?

While this was, indeed, Pete and Ariana's fate, it's not everyone'south, and equally tattoos get more than and more mainstream, it seems unlikely that people volition ever finish getting tattoos for or with their significant others. Only why, even with not-cracking odds and amid then much cultural superstition, do we do it?

Viren Swami is a professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, and has studied personality differences between tattooed and non-tattooed people (a hint: there aren't many), likewise as people'southward motivations for getting tattooed. Amid individuals, he says, the main motivators for getting tattooed are the desire to impart a sense of uniqueness and/or to commemorate someone or something of import. He suspects this logic can be extended to couples equally well. "When a couple gets the aforementioned tattoo, or even when an individual gets a tattoo that is a marker of the relationship, they're substantially proverb 'This is an important relationship for me,'" says Swami. "'This is an important, meaningful relationship, and I'd similar to symbolize it in a way that involves permanence and involves pain.'"

This tracks with the couples with matching tattoos I spoke to — all of whom, notably, take been together for years, and still feel skillful about their tattoos months or years subsequently getting them. "My girlfriend and I got [matching tattoos] after being together for seven years (throughout which we always said we would never get matching tattoos)," says Susie, who has a moon on her inner wrist to go with the sun on her partner's inner wrist. "We got a footling brunch drunk and our judgment went out the window. Only we love them!" She says that both she and her girlfriend used to bide by a vi-month consideration period prior to whatsoever private tattoos, but they're both happy they broke their rule (incidentally, 6 months after getting it).

"Even if we break up someday, I'll still love the moon and she'll still beloved the sunday," she says. "We're celebrating viii years together this month and plan on getting married on Halloween 2020 — which syncs up with the total moon!"

Another couple says their matching tattoos were a way to cement the certainty they felt about each other. "I'm not naïve about how breakups happen — I'm in my mid-30s and I've been through a few big ones," says Summer. "Since I never really felt confident any detail relationship would last forever, I never wanted to commit to a matching tattoo with a dude." Merely with Peter, her now-fiancé, she says, it was different.

"All my normal protections and fears about my relationship ending were but … non there … with Peter. We bought a firm together before our commencement anniversary. Three months after that, nosotros adopted a dog. Vi months after that, still equally happy as either of us have ever been, we went to New Orleans and got engaged," she says. "On that aforementioned trip, we got the tattoos. Matching magnets on our dorsum shoulders, facing each other." To Summer, the magnets stand for their owners' literal magnetism toward each other, only likewise a vocal that made her call back of Peter before they officially got together — "Magnet" by NRBQ.

Similar Susie, Summertime doesn't see a breakup in her and Peter'due south futurity, but she says that even if they did dissever upward, she thinks the tattoo would nevertheless hold its meaning. "Hypothetically, if nosotros ever DID break upwards I just know nosotros'd end upwardly desperate to be around each other again, and the tattoo would actually exist even more advisable," she says. "We're magnets, man!"

More just a powerful marker of 1's current feelings, Swami as well suspects that tattoos might even improve the relationships of couples who get tattoos together. "I of the things we find in our research is that getting a tattoo has an affect on the individual. People who become their first tattoo accept more positive torso image afterward," he says. "I suspect something similar might happen in relationships with couples who get matching tattoos. The fact that yous share this feel, y'all've gone through the procedure of getting tattooed together, yous might feel more intimate and might feel closer to your partner as a result."

Allison and her husband of ten years have matching ouroboros tattoos, and though they got them 9 months apart, they've get a source of shared family history for their children also. "I got mine correct earlier I got pregnant with our first child, and he got his right at the end of the pregnancy, then it's become this sort of marking of that menstruation of being pregnant with our first child," she says. "Now that we have ii kids we joke effectually that it's the family crest, and the kids draw it in mark on their bodies."

Perhaps, then, those couples bold enough to flout superstition aren't so much impulsive equally they are evolved; by getting matching tattoos, maybe they brand tangible the conventionalities that what makes a relationship successful, or important, isn't necessarily how long it lasts.

Why Do Couples Get Matching Tattoos?