I was talking about my dreams yesterday with a dear friend. Lately the Ex has been making a nightly appearance. As we picked them apart to figure out their meaning, I remember a therapist once told me a way to analyze dreams.
She said to write down the broad strokes of the dream; Who/What/When/Where kind of things. Then look at each part of the dream and determine what it represents to you. Not everyone else, but to you. Then look at what feelings and people are tied to that meaning.
For example; I dreamed that the Ex came for a visit. He stated that he wanted me to pay him back any money he had spent on home repairs while we were married and for any money he had paid toward the mortgage while he was living there. I told him, no, that what little he had spent on home repairs during the seven years of our marriage was almost nothing, and that any money he paid towards the mortgage covered his living expenses since I had paid all the other bills, including part of the mortgage. When I asked him why he needed the money – he didn’t say anything, just vanished. As things weirdly happen in dreams we were on a train after that. The train didn’t travel all the way to our destination, so we had to make other plans to get home. Again he disappeared and gave no care to how I was going to get there. The thing was in the dream I knew all along that he was going to leave me. I kept telling him but he insisted that he loved me and he would always be there.
So how to break this down: To me, my Ex represents abandonment – the money he spoke of represents the bloodletting of my resources from him – his disappearances represent security or lack of it, travel represents moving forward towards the future – and the fact that I saw he would leave represents the red flags I saw/but didn’t want to see when we got together. Lastly his declaration of love for me represents a lie.
Pull that all together and clearly the feeling of abandonment is still a fear of mine as it came up three times in this dream – his lack of love for me represents the lack of love I have for myself, the money represents what I still think I owe others for my existence, his lie represent the lies I tell myself, and the fact that I knew where I was headed before it happened represents to me that if I trust my instincts I would do much better in this life.
To that my dear wonderful friend replied, nahhh - he was just a young soul fresh off the pig farm with no depth or heart. OMG – She nailed it.