I really must know...

[Corky]

Today I talked to my ex-girlfriend, whom I'm still pretty good friends with although we still tend to act like lovers more than friends... Anyway, she told me she had a dream about me last night (we don't really talk all that often) and what she had told me in an e-mail was:



"Yeah. You were getting married... to a boy who you said you weren't in love with but who made you feel like the most important person in the world. I was invited to your wedding and you rode down the aisle in dark denim jeans and a black and red coat... On a vintage Red Bicycle. Then we all ran around a field that you were married on..."



The whole reason the thing about the boy is weird is because I am female, but I'm not exactly attracted to men (I'm a lesbian, to put it flat out).

Basically, it sounds so absurd (and she's not really the type to tell you that she was thinking (or in this case dreaming) about you) so I just really must know what it means or what it has to do with. I'm open for questions, and I hope somebody will respond.

[Athanor]

Hi Corky,

One view of dreams is that overall, they try to balance out and complete the ego’s viewpoint which can often tend to become narrow and restrictive. To do this, they picture inner and outer situations in an objective way using metaphors in order to try as best as they can to give the ego clues about his or her overall situation and where it could lead in general terms.

By one estimate, only about 15% of dreams are depicting a situation involving a real outer person and relationships while the rest are showing inner psychological aspects and dynamics of the dreamer.

So an important step in this case is to decide if your ex-girlfriend’s dream is mostly about you or herself. This could be hard to do because you’re still pretty closely involved in some ways, but perhaps basically you don’t appear to “need” each other at some root level and therefore your current psychological situation shouldn’t likely be too necessary for a dream to comment on. Also you mentioned that you really don’t communicate much about things in general.

In addition, if your image in the dream wasn’t on the whole a photographic likeness, or if something else seemed to be “not you”, then you probably were representing some aspect of your friend’s psychology.

And since you don’t appear to have interacted with your friend in any important or unusual way just before the dream, this too would tend to point towards your image being about some inner aspect of herself.

Dreams are built on analogies and similarities, so one view is that you appeared in this dream because your ex probably almost certainly has certain traits and characteristics that she shares with you consciously or unconsciously, and which are easily projected onto you. This is partly the reason why she fell in love with you in the first place.

However, for me it becomes a touchy issue to go on with an interpretation because your friend as well as yourself are apparently assuming the dream is really just about you, and it’s not her who is asking for an interpretation.

So because I’m pretty sure the dream is about your friend’s own psychology, I won’t offer any suggestions about a possible interpretation unless she is interested. Just to mention that if she is, it’s always best to have a thumbnail description of her background and overall personality, an outline of anything that stands out from a day or two before the dream (or whether she has been struggling with some problem or situation for awhile leading up to the dream), and all of the spontaneous thoughts, memories and feelings that come to mind about each image in the dream. With this type of dream context, it’s much more likely to be able to provide an accurate interpretation.

Sorry if this might seem to leave you hanging, but I feel it’s important to respect the basic idea that a person’s dreams are private and shouldn’t be discussed openly unless the person agrees.