My wife has nightmares

I’m not sure about this, but my own informal and somewhat anecdotal research suggests that most people have a recurring theme to their dreams and nightmares. I spent a ridiculous number of years as an undergrad and it seems that that left enough of an impression on my psyche that I always dream about my days in university. Typically I remember that there’s a class on my schedule that I forgot about and I haven’t attended all semester. This actually happened to me – I had a seminar component to one of my classes that I forgot to attend right up until the midterm exams. Anyways, in the dream, I haven’t attended any classes at all right up to the final exams, I’m completely unprepared for the exam, failure is almost certain, I’ll probably be expelled, and on top of that the world will probably end.

When I met her, most of my wife’s nightmares were about elevator shafts, but since we’ve been together, it’s been something different. In her dreams, she panics when she realizes that she didn’t marry me – instead, she’s either married to someone else whom she can’t remember, or she’s married to her last boyfriend.

My wife, like a lot of women who have bad relationships with their fathers, spent years seeking male approval and attention, and most of the men who gave her that attention weren’t at all equal to or worthy of her. None of them physically abused her, but her last boyfriend verbally abused her, and it has to be said that none of her exes really treated her as well as she deserved.

After we got married, she told me that she actually felt guilty – she felt like it was her fate in life to marry a man much like her father – a man who would abuse her – and that by marrying me she had cheated that fate. She felt like it was her fate to learn to deal with that abuse and, I guess, to accomodate her abuser, and that by marrying me she had chosen “the easy way out” (her words). I think these dreams are a manifestation of that guilt.