Sweet Dream About Your Ex? Is that OK?

Next month, November 2018, will mark 50 years since "Ted" and I first met. I could say that's the reason for the dream, but I think it was more because I had taken a painkiller the doctor prescribed for an injury to my shoulder. 

This dream was especially wonderful, truly a dream that would be fun to come true. Ted and I were somehow standing on the sidewalk in front of the house in the city where he now lives. We were at the age we are now. His present wife, my former friend, wasn't with him; nor was my wonderfully loving, faithful, adoring present-day husband. 

As Ted and I spoke, we must have telepathically set up boundaries ahead of time that limited our discussion to the past. If we spoke about our present, we both understood that we would not mention our spouses or even our children. (I think that was more to protect me than him since he was the one who left.)

The conversation in my dream apparently was just to get caught up with who we are right now.  I told him my cousin died.  We talked about how much she had bothered him, and if truth be told, bothered me.  We laughed about that--not her death. I told him about our friend Georgie's struggle with cancer and how Chuck, Ted's friend grieved her passing. (Ted had lost touch with our old friends.) I told him I went to Chuck's betrothal party for the new person in his life.

I can't remember the other parts of the conversation, but it felt as if we eventually started sharing our views about politics, religion, all the things we used to talk about.  I might have mentioned the book I'm writing, I'm not sure.  I think I told him I read online about the court case he won that has become a precedent for other cases involving issues of justice. I congratulated him on that. 

Somehow my dream had us suddenly sitting in the back seat of a car, next to each other. My upper arm was touching his, and it felt familiar and safe and almost ascendant from the present time and space. 

I didn't talk about our daughter, our only child to whom he sent a "good-bye" letter a few years ago! How could I go there?  The letter left her devastated. My wrath even in this lovely dream state would have emerged, and I might pound my arms against his chest and shout, "How could you? How could you? How could you?  Our beautiful wonderful child?"  And then I would most likely spiral down to ask how he could have left us to begin with. I'd have to ask if he understood what he took from her, from both of us, actually from all three of us? I'd pound him until he felt pain and then I'd fall to pieces on the floor of the backseat in tears. But I didn't do that in my dream. 

My dream state allowed me to talk about us, just touch base. After all, he had been everything to me--my best friend, my lover, my confidant. It somehow gave me a sense of great peace and a large measure of happiness and contentment to just connect with him one last time. I woke up smiling.

Are We Responsible for Our Dreams? 

The question for any of us who were left by people who were good to us until they weren't, is this: When we have sweet dreams about a person who in the end did us great harm and, more importantly, caused great psychological harm to our child, should we feel guilt?

Of course not. We were only dreaming. Some might argue that our state of mind during the day might determine what we dream at night, and doesn't our sweet dream mean that we are still holding on to the past? This issue of whether or not we are able to let go of the past does not make us responsible for dreams over which we have little control.

It's important to remember that often the dreams we think represent a person or a symbol of the person, do not. Meanings of dreams are not always that clear. I once took a dream class where we were taught to recognize how much our dreams are made up of language puns.  Dreaming of a white sheet in the wash, for example, might be a play on the word "white".  If we have a friend whose last name happens to be White, we need to examine whether this is a dream about her perhaps. A dream about a lion possibly can be our minds playing with the word "lying" as in "I'm lyin'".  Sometimes I think a person in the dream is a composite of various people. The "Ted" that appears in some of my dreams sometimes feels like a composite of all the men I've loved before. (Insert: a virtual nod over to Willie Nelson.)  

If It Helps Us Be More Loving...

I believe that if we wake refreshed, at peace--if somehow our dream helps us function more lovingly in the world, more loving to our present spouse, then surely it can't be wrong.  Loving someone who was good to you in your life until he wasn't, is tricky business. When someone has left a strong emotional imprint in your psyche, loved you in a healthy way all the while he loved you, don't worry about your sweet dreams of that person. We have sweet dreams about many things that are gone from our lives. All we can do is wrap that dream up in imaginary pastel-colored tissue paper, tie it will a lovely bow, and put it into a jar we've labeled "Thank you". And if we use the dream to transfer all those loving feelings to those around us, then it was truly a spiritual gift.