I Keep Dreaming My Husband Marries Other Women

Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex & relationships. If you’ve got a good one, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg just might tell you what it means! Click here to submit yours (18 and older only for dream interpretations, please). This week, a reader asks Lauri:

Hi, I have a weird dream: sometimes it’s my husband marrying somebody else and we end up in a polygamous set up. But this time he was hitting me and defending the other woman. I woke up sweaty.

Lauri: Since you keep getting this dream, or at least different forms of this dream, it means it is connected to an ongoing issue. These dreams will continue until the issue is resolved. So what is the issue? Well, typically when we dream our spouse is with someone else it is an indication that he or she is spending too much time on something such as work or some sort of sport or project that causes us to feel like this other thing has become a third wheel in the relationship.

In your dreams he is not just cheating but actually marrying someone else. This takes it up a notch and may indicate that you feel he is a bit too committed to this other “thing” and that this is how your life is going to be now. It does concern me a bit that your dreams have progressed to where he is beating you. I am going to assume this is not his nature and the abuse in the dream seems strange to you. In this case it tells me that he may be metaphorically “beating you down” in some way.

In real life have you been protesting the time he has been putting into work or some project or whatever this bone of contention is? And has he been making you feel bad for being upset about it? Or are you beating yourself up for being upset? Since the dreams have progressed, the real life situation has progressed and it doesn’t seem that either one of you is handling it properly.

My suggestion is, if you are nagging, stop! No one responds well to nagging. What seems to work best is finding a compromise. Offer to cut back on something of yours if he cuts back on how much time he gives to this “third wheel” in the relationship. If it is something he can’t change at the moment, like work, then find something that you can focus on and look forward to doing so that you don’t feel cheated out of your time with him. And most importantly, start doing a date night every week or find a way to carve out special time for each other. If you can’t have the quantity of time you want, then make what time you do have full of quality.