Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: If you are separated, you likely already know that sometimes, your feelings sneak up on you. For example, your day can be going along just fine. You may wake up and experience pride that you are coping quite well, thank you very much. But while doing mundane tasks, feelings of loss and loneliness may rear their ugly heads – seemingly out of the blue.

A common time to experience these unwelcome emotions is during or after dreaming. Many of us go to bed feeling somewhat at peace. And then we’ll have disturbing dreams. Or we’ll have seemingly benign dreams about our separated husband that inspire us to attempt to analyze the dreams to uncover our real feelings.

Someone might say, “I honestly feel like I’m coping pretty well during my separation. I wish my husband and I communicated more frequently. But for the most part, I can’t complain. I didn’t want to separate. But I’ve mostly accepted it. I try to stay very busy so I don’t dwell on the negative, and I feel like this strategy has been relatively successful. I can maintain my positivity during day time hours. But when I sleep, I almost always dream of my separated husband. Sometimes, I actually have nightmares. My husband will be injured. Or he’ll be lashing out at me and saying hurtful things. Other times, he will just appear as a bystander in my regular dreams. Much of the time, he doesn’t say or do anything. He’s just there. Why is my separated husband showing up in my dreams?

I’m not a dream expert, but I think that there are some obvious theories. I will go over them below. But first, let’s discuss why we dream.

How Our Daily Lives Influence Our Dreams: Researchers believe that dreams help us process the information and emotions that we experience during the day. That said, the content of our dreams is not always the result of what we have experienced during waking hours. In fact, sometimes the event that inspires the dream happened days or weeks before the dream itself. (This is called dream lag.) People dream about loved ones or those who are very close to us almost 70% of the time. Interestingly, we most frequently dream about themes from our own lives. For example, college students dream about school. Pregnant women dream about childbirth. Nurses dream about caregiving.

However, we can also dream about things that are far outside of our own realities. For example, deaf people sometimes hear things in their dreams. Someone who is afraid of public speaking may dream of himself giving a motivational speech that goes viral. In this way, our dreams can serve as wishful thinking or even as a path to nudge us toward growth or coping mechanisms.

Nightmares: Bad dreams aren’t as uncommon as many of us assume. Five percent of us have at least one nightmare per week. Experts believe that stress or emotional upset can contribute to nightmares, although sometimes they are a side effect of medications or illness. Other times, they might mean nothing at all.

Dreams During A Marital Separation: I believe that the dreams of a separated husband are a common experience for many of us. My most common dream during my own separation was running into my husband and his new, prettier wife. But I also had the dream about him being injured or ill. I would wake up from those in a cold sweat, wanting to contact my husband to make sure that he was physically okay. I also had dreams of myself being old and alone.

In my case, I was obviously playing out my fears and worst-case scenarios in my sleep. But every once in awhile, I would dream of a sweet reconciliation. (Reconciling was what I wanted and you could even argue that it was foretelling the future because we did eventually reconcile. There’s more on that here.) But at the time of that dream, my husband and I were not on great terms, which leads me to my next point.

Wish Fulfillment, Worst Fears, Projections, Or Nothing At All: Honestly, any of these are possibilities when you dream about your separated husband. And since our dreams do not always align with exactly what happened that day and can lag in front of or behind reality, it can be hard to guess at what the dreams mean, if anything.

Generally speaking, it is probably safe to say that your separated husband is on your mind, even if you are coping quite well and doing a good job of compartmentalizing this part of your life. It is human nature to downplay the flood of emotions that might want to bubble to the surface. Most of us want to appear that we are managing just fine. We want our husband to see us capable and coping. This is understandable and I would argue that it is even advisable. But it doesn’t leave you much room for processing your emotions while you are awake. And that is why you might be trying to process them in your sleep.

This is totally normal. It doesn’t mean that your nightmares or your wish-fulfillment dreams are going to come true. Nor does it mean that you are not coping as well as you think that you are. It may just mean that your brain is working to process the extra emotions, the uncertainty, and the new circumstances of your life. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. So do not worry too much about your dreams. They only become detrimental if they inspire negative action. And you can actually flip this script and make them a positive influence if you can use them to inspire positive action.

I know that, while you are coping, this can be a difficult time.  If it helps, you can read about how I got through it (and saved my marriage) at http://isavedmy marriage.com

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