What Do These Dreams About My Separated Spouse Mean?
I sometimes hear from separated wives who have suddenly started having vivid dreams about their separated husbands. They often wonder what this means and whether it might have any implication on a reconciliation. Understandably, these wives are often fearful that bad or ominous dreams mean that a divorce is imminent or that good or hopeful dreams mean that things might get better.
Here’s an example. A wife might say, “honestly, I’m not someone who typically remembers my dreams. I usually do not have very many. But ever since my husband and I separated, I’ve dreamt of him every night. In the beginning, my dreams were romantic. They were more like memories of us when we first met. I’d wake up hopeful and I’d think that the good dreams were a good sign. But then, the dreams started to get darker. I’d dream that my husband was injured. Or I’d dream that he got remarried, although we’d never divorced. I’d dream that right as we were making progress, he would meet someone else and want to marry her. I wake up in a cold sweat sometimes. I worry that my subconscious is telling me that my marriage is over. I’ve told some of my friends about this and they think that I’m crazy. I’ve even thought of trying to read some books about dreams to see what all of this means. I know that this is crazy, but do these dreams have any impact on things?”
I am in no way a professional. I can’t interpret dreams and I am not a therapist. I am just a wife who in the past was separated and I write articles about the experience. I used to have the same types of dreams during my own separation. And frankly, I think that the dreams only impacted things when I allowed the dreams to upset me, make me fearful, and then acted out because of them. Unfortunately, this happened more times than I care to admit.
Some Perspective About The Dreams: In hindsight, I now notice something very useful about the dreams. They often reflected my mood or overall emotions. At the time of my separation, my emotions were overwhelmingly fearful, which is why my dream usually depicted the loss of my husband in some way. This wasn’t always literal, although I sometimes did have dreams of him being injured. No, it was more like he was gradually being lost to me, like I’d be trying to get to him in my dreams, but he was just out of reach. Or I’d be in the forrest and I could see him with someone else. Ocassionally, if my husband and I had a decent conversation or outing, I’d dream hopeful, romantic dreams. I don’t think that you need to be a great therapist to see that I was usually either dreaming about what I either really didn’t want to happen or what I really did want to happen. It was basically opposite extremes. There was no middle ground.
Interestingly enough, my husband and I are reconciled today and the literal manifestation of these dreams never happened. What I mean by this is that I haven’t had the actual real manifestation of anything that I’ve dreamed. I wasn’t seeing into the future when I had bad dreams or good dreams. With that said, sometimes I would have bad dreams and the emotions that I experienced when I woke up contributed to me doing things that I later regretted. For example, if I’d dream that my husband had met someone else, I’d literally accuse him of cheating if we had a really bad day. I like to think that I might not have done this if I hadn’t had the dream.
So I think it’s really helpful to try to keep this in perspective. You’re likely dreaming based on fear and on on not knowing what is going to happen. That’s why in the beginning you were having hopeful dreams and why they might also be changing now. (You might be losing hope.) Please try not to put so much importance on the dreams that you allow them to influence your reality. This doesn’t need to be the case if you don’t let it.
Just to show you that this can happen with anything that you care deeply about, I recently had a similar experience with one of my pets. My rescue dog was found to have heartworms after I adopted him. He had a severe case and I was extremely worried that he wasn’t going to make it. I’d dream about him being really sick ,or disabled, or that he died. I would wake up and I’d rush to him, thinking that I was surely going to find him dead. When he would be fine, I’d worry that his health was going to deteriorate because maybe in some way, the dreams were prophetic. That wasn’t the case in exactly the same way that it wasn’t the case with my husband. He’s now a happy, heartworm-free, playful dog that enhances our life. The dreams had nothing to do with reality. They were only based on my fear that he wasn’t going to be okay.
Why It Is Action, Not Dreams, That Determine The Future: Your dreams about your husband are probably based on your fear that your marriage isn’t going to be okay. But dreams do not determine the future. Your actions do. If you want to turn this negative into a positive, use these emotions to propel you to do the work to save your marriage. Don’t let it propel you to confront your husband or to assume the worst. During my own separation, I learned to only do things that were going to bring my husband closer to me, not to drive him away. Panicking about dreams falls into the category of the later, although I know that having perspective about this can be challenging. I can tell you, though, that my dreams definitely had no impact whatsoever on our separation and eventual reconciliation.You can read more about that reconciliation at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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