I am encouraging Bev to climb up on a standthat is something like a pedestal for a statue. She doesn’t really want to, but she complies. I keep asking her to raise her arm higher, like the Statue of Liberty raising her torch. Suddenly she begins sto teeter and fall off. I am terrified that she might get hurt or killed, but I’m paralyzed and can’t do anything to stop her from falling.
This is a dream of a man recounted by Alan Siegel in his book, Dream Wisdom: Uncovering Life’s Answers in Your Dreams. The man who had this dream had put his wife on a pedestal. In fact he had idealized her so much that he had been blinded to who she was. Yes, she was intelligent and successful, yet she has been giving him a clear message that her career was more important than deepening their marriage or having a family. To his chagrin, this man’s idol at fallen.
As this man talked more to a friend about his marital discontent, he realized that his wife had withdrawn from him and invested herself in her career. He realized that if he wanted to have children, he would need to leave her and find someone who shared his vision of a family life.
After talking about his marriage with his friend, the man sought individual psychotherapy. He realized he needed to address his tendency to idealize women and his fears of intimacy if he was going to achieve a successful marriage. The man credited his divorce foreshadowing dream for starting the process that led to his separation from Bev.
Dreams can help us when we are at an impasse in our relationship. We can make a realistic decision about whether to repair our relationship or end it. Siegal writes that dreams foreshadowing a separation give us clues to repetitive patterns in relationships, such as this man’s tendency to idealize women. Understanding such tendencies can help us avoid repeating the same mistakes in future relationships, and psychotherapy can help. See my website for more information regarding Dr. Lee Haworth, Licensed Psychologist in Concord, California.
