I used to have bad dreams in my first marriage. Dreams that involved my husband at the time that caused me to wake up angry.
Fuming, in fact.
The plot of the dreams was always tenuous, the storyline threads slipping from my mind as soon as I woke.
But the anger remained for hours until it would dissipate.
I used to warn my husband on those mornings, explaining that if he felt any sort of a chill or irritability from me that is was simply residue from my nocturnal hallucinations.
But they weren’t really hallucinations, were they? In fact, it seems as though the truth only came out when I was safely asleep. The lies safely shielded me when I was awake.
Looking back, those dreams were my training wheels; slowly acclimating me to the reality. Trying on the idea of my husband being a wolf in sheep’s clothing in small, measured doses.
And dreams were one of the tools I used to learn to trust again. It’s been five years now with my new husband, and not one rage-inducing dream yet.
And if one does happen to cross my path one night, you better believe I won’t simply brush it off as just a bad dream. At least not until I make sure it isn’t real.
Did any of you experience suggestions of the truth in your dreams before in came to you in the harshness of the day?
yeah, I had that!
Can’t say I did…. thankfully. Sleep was always a blessing for me. It was the “awake” part of the day I seemed to dread as my marriage crumbled.
yes, i had dreams which involved my ex husband, before D day leaving me stranded at an airport, looking for him and not finding him and more, more and more, Now after D day, i still have dreams of my now ex husband, i suffered emotional abuse including gaslighting and emotional blackmail. In the end he threatened to divorce me and leave me destitute several times a day. Somehow now I try to rationalize his behavior and convince myself it was not abuse because it wasn’t the “classic” physical hitting abuse that people think of with abuse. Almost as if my awake mind calling it abuse would label him unjustly. My dreams set me right when my thinking turns that way. I am back to being married to him, back to him manipulating me and talking down to me, telling me what in his mind i am not good enough at. I wake up remembering more clearly, and yes, what i experienced was in fact abuse in its truest form. My subconscious mind was setting my full mind right.
It often is our wiser mind. Less cluttered and distracted and more able to resist those manipulations of others.
No, I didn’t. I do recall situations that seemed odd at the time but I never researched because I trusted my wife – and subconsciously didn’t want to know the truth about her deceit and sleeping around. I continue to work on forgiving myself for trusting such a person and failing to recognize her lack of character and honor. Living and learning.
I beat myself up about that too. But then I think that I would rather err on the side of believing in the goodness of people than always seeing bad.
I used to have dreams that my boyfriend would leave. The situations would vary but he always ended up leaving me at some point during the dream. And that’s exactly what he ended up doing in RL.
Yes. The last time I saw my STBX of 20 years, he walked down the stairs, kissed me goodbye and said he would be home from a trip in a few days. I fell asleep right after that and dreamed the same scene – him walking down the stairs, etc. But as he walked out the door, a younger, slimmer him, dressed all in black, walked in the door, looked at me and smirked. I turned and screamed ” J – you are two people!” but he was gone and the one in black was gone, too. I woke with a start. Two weeks later he sent me an email that he was not coming home. Many months later I discovered he had been involved with another woman for years. So he really was two people. Dream still scares me.
Wow. That is a freaky one.
Absolutely! I had recurrent dreams that centered around houses falling down, crumbling houses and houses falling down hills. I could never make sense of the dreams…I .never made the connection to a crumbling marriage. I get it now.
Ahhh…hindsight:)
I did. Twice that he was unfaithful and I remember waking up so upset and angry. I’ll be mad at him that morning and I rember telling him about my dreams. Of course he said it was just that…a bad dream.
Mine too. He even laughed about the absurdity of it. Ugh.
Yes, I had many dreams over the course of 36 years where I woke up feeling angry or upset with him. In one of the later ones I dreamed I told him he could “go be with his coworker because I was strong enough for him to leave me now.” About a year later he left and moved closer to her and her husband. Later I discovered he was “planting seeds” to break up her marriage and he hoped she would leave her husband for him. They’d been involved in an emotional affair for many years.
Wow. Isn’t it amazing how part of our brains refuse to see things while the other part is trying to get us to pay attention?