Unconventional Wisdom: Dream Team

My husband of 16 years told me yesterday that he’d had a gay sex dream. I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand I’m glad he feels safe enough to share that information. On the other hand I’m wondering if he might be bicurious. Last year he went through a midlife crisis and had an affair with a female for a few weeks. I thought we’d come to a better understanding and appreciation of each other. Now I’m wondering if I’m just a dumbass waiting to see if my world is really falling apart.

Whew! You are really being hard on yourself! Why are you beating yourself up for wanting your 16-year marriage to continue? Why do you (and possibly your husband) believe that a dream is destiny? And why would you wait for a horror show to take over your life? If you really wanted to stay in your marriage, wouldn’t you fight like hell to prevent that? Your husband started a conversation with you about his dream; you need to continue it. You could ask him how the dream made him feel and what he thinks about it. Dreams essentially mean what we want them to mean. And instead of wondering whether your husband might be “bicurious,” why don’t you ask him if he thinks about same-sex partnering in waking life? Not that such thoughts would necessarily spell the end of your relationship, either. Clearly your husband has heterosexual desires. Here are a few things you need to know about dreams so that you don’t attribute more to them than they warrant. Dreams are notorious for all kinds of imagery and scenarios, and taking them literally or even trying to give them metaphorical meaning is a dangerous enterprise. On the scientific front, no one knows what dreams mean, if anything. Dreams and their meaning constitute one of the enduring mysteries of psychology. There is some evidence that they’re just big cinematic reels unspooling in our heads while our brains are offline, pulling images from here and there, now and then, some of which discharge emotional freight and some of which do not. It turns out that gay sex dreams are relatively common among heterosexuals and not a sign that your marriage is about to fall apart. Wouldn’t life be sweet if the only dreams we had were of affection, whatever the source of that affection? Who wouldn’t wake up happy? Neither you nor your husband should be preoccupied with the gender of the partners that flit through his (or your) brain. What you need to focus on is the quality of affection that you two share day and night—the theme that seems to run through the two episodes (the dream and the diversion) that you report. Does your husband feel that his needs for love and affection are currently being met in the relationship? Do you? Was his affair the only one he had in 16 years of marriage, or were there others that you were not told about? Do you make time to listen to each other and to share your daily triumphs and concerns? To flirt with each other and to play? The two of you have been married for 16 years. You may be overdue to update each other on the contents of your heads and your waking-life dreams and desires for the days and years to come. Are you sexually engaged enough with each other? Every couple needs to recharge their connection at regular intervals. That would fulfill most people’s dreams.