I was upstairs putting together some byzantine toy for the children, wondering why the ex didn’t come up to help. When finally it was done, I came down to a horrendous sight.
He hadn’t been able to assist me on the second floor because he’d been busy rearranging the first floor. You must understand that this man is a prodigious collector of every sort of paper. He struggles to throw away anything made from trees, and in the time it had taken me to assemble the kids’ toy he’d moved his entire collection back into my house. Along with every one of his storage “solutions”: desks, bookshelves, binders, file folders, and et cetera.
I panicked. I knew it was a dream, yet I couldn’t slow my racing heart or quickening breath. I believe I may have managed to call out.
I cast my eyes about at the damage. He’d shoved aside a new armoire and replaced it with bookshelves. Boxes were piled over the dining room table. And in the kitchen…oh the kitchen. He’d removed cabinets from the walls and replaced them with bookshelves. His desk had been wedged between the pantry and the dishwasher, neither of which could be opened.
“But where will I put all the dishes?” I asked in dismay.
He leered at me. “Guess that’s your problem, isn’t it? You wanted me to move back in, so you can deal with all my stuff. You just couldn’t make it on your own, could you?”
“I was doing fine,” I said.
“Yeah, but you’re broke now.”
“I’m not broke. I have enough money!”
He answered over his shoulder, smugly, as he stacked a messy sheaf of papers where once the sippy cups had lived. “Only because you’re taking out loans at those paycheck and title loan places.”
“No I’m not,” I insisted. “I don’t need you financially at all. I asked you to come back because I love you.”
The dream spun off into another direction wherein I was given a new house, one that came fully furnished right down to every last drawer. This prompted hours of dreamy exploration.
Once awake and even days later I have no idea why I dreamed of my ex moving home. I do love him, though not in the way that I’d consider asking him to come here to live. I don’t need him financially. By all indications we’re doing far better as friends than we ever did when married to each other.
And if anyone ever tried to put a desk in between my dishwasher and pantry…well. That would be the end of that relationship.
Why would I dream such a thing? Armchair dream analysts’ explications are welcome in the comments below.
My take: sounds like fear that letting someone in your life will wreck it. The ex is what wrecked it last time, so that’s why he’s there. Your life is functioning fine, and you don’t need anyone, but maybe you want someone. Maybe you’re afraid that changing how things are (letting someone in?) will cause things to fall apart again, and quickly.
That was full of a good bit of assumption and guessing, so if you think it’s off the mark, mea culpa.
Your brain was just doing a bit of early spring cleaning, getting rid of redundant, space-consuming memories ready for the new erotic stuff that’s on its way ;o)
1. You are the best–really, the only–person to figure out what your own dreams mean.
2. Dreams don’t have an objective meaning that you can discover by investigation and analysis. Interpreting dreams is more like interpreting ink blots. They provide prompts for thinking about your own concerns and feelings.
3. The elements of dreams aren’t arbitrary: they usually have some significance to the dreamer. But that doesn’t tell you what that significance is. Maybe you want it, maybe you don’t want it; maybe you fear it, maybe you have conquered your fear of it; it may be something that you have seen, or thought about, recently; it may be something that is similar to a current concern in some way.
4. There is evidence that dreams are functional, rather than meaningful. See
Why we dream
The wake-sleep algorithm for training neural networks
http://world.std.com/~swmcd/steven/stories/dream.html
Just another symptom of being sick; that’d be my guess.
I agree, too much NyQuil! :-)
I have no insight into the dream but damn, that’s a weird one!
must have been the chilli
ACK! That wasn’t a dream – it was a nightmare!!
You need more sex.
Less chili, more sex, less Nyquill.
CHECK!
:)
aag,
I cannot interpret your dream, but I can commiserate. I sometimes…not often, but sometimes…dream that my gay ex husband wanted to come home and that I welcomed him.
I wake up from those dreams relieved that they were dreams, but also perhaps a bit nostalgic. I was happy married to him. I am much, much happier now, but he is a good person and I will always love him.
Betty
I think Holly’s on to something — is somebody wanting to get more domestic than you’d like?
One method of dream work I like is to realize that each and every element of the dream came from some aspect of yourself, and is there for a reason. Retell the dream from the vantage point of each significant element, telling it in real time, as if it is happening now, and include your motivation for being there in the dream, e.g.: I am a desk. I am being brought into the house by the ex while AAG is upstairs working on a toy. She doesn’t know I’m coming in. I’m being installed by the ex between the dishwasher and the pantry because…
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, kiddo.
houses are sometimes your consciousness state of mind
him coming back sounds like boundary-checking and affirming your choices regarding your past, present & future
the new house, fully furnished, sounds like new ideas and patterns of thinking & being to explore
the emotional intensity made it memorable
our subconscious wanted you to take note
all in all, imho, sounds good!
der, YOUR subconscious
not our collective subconscious …
Definitely more sex, more good food, and you’ll be having dirty dreams in no time!
Hmmm… sounds like a very brief but accurate summary of your life over the past couple of years…
It starts by recognizing that you still love him as a person though you aren’t “in love” with him… and that there’s no way he should be doing the stuff he’s doing (eg. re-arranging the furniture)…
It shows that his perception of the finances didn’t match yours… you could indeed survive without him and have…
In the end, you’re presented with something new and wonderful to explore… in the dream it was a house which represents your new life you’ve begun…
So in short, it was a short recap of things… validating the struggles of the past several years… showing you it was all worthwhile to get that new life.
Dave
PS. oh, and you need more sex ;)
If I recall correctly, Jungian analysis recognized three types of dreams:
1. Dreams of the interior landscape, in which all people, structures and animals represent aspects of the dreamer’s self.
2. Dreams which may predict future events in the life of the dreamer, not by any paranormal means, but by focusing on signs such as events or behavior which the dreamer has ignored in waking life.
3. Dreams which may predict future events in the external world, beyond the immediate life of the dreamer, by drawing attention to signs ignored or obscured in waking life.
I think your dream could be any one of the three, aag.
1. The interior landscape. Based on your descriptions of him, your ex appears to be the type of person who lives beyond his means and realizes his folly when there are few options available to remedy his situation. Those few options are typically costly and unpleasant, such as payday loans. While you are frugal and skilled in managing money, you are self-employed and, perhaps like many self-employed folks, are edgy about not having sufficient income or an unexpected repair bill. So you are vigilant, you worry, and you dream, because the long-term consequences of not enough money would disrupt your life (your home) in the same way as finding all those ineffectual “storage solutions” in your living room.
2. An example of the second type of dream would this scenario: your ex is unable to pay his taxes and has maxed out his credit cards, so his problem becomes your problem. If he pays child support, you may worry if those payments are a significant part of your budget. If he was unable to pay rent and pay child support, would you be forced to allow him to move back to keep your cash flow positive? Do you fear that you would feel sorry for him and allow him to move back as a temporary measure that could prove to be not so temporary? And if he moved back would he claim that he did it to help you, instead of the other way around? (This would make me wake up screaming.)
3. Your dream could be reflecting the current state of the economy and the loss of jobs, since there are many couples who would obtain divorces if they could afford them. Or divorced couples who find that they have to reunite to survive financially.
Sorry for the length of the comment, aag, and I hope you have better dreams.