Dream - Losing my way

Couple of weeks ago I had the following dream...

I was asleep in my bed when my boyfriend came home from his night out, taking two guests along into the kitchen. I woke up and was not aware he had brought guests with him and just entered the living room to welcome him, relieved to have him home, when I noticed the strangers in the kitchen. Not wanting them to see me exposed in my nightly outfit I crouched behind the relaxing chair. At that point my boyfriend became aware of my presence and the possibility of being exposed and ushered his guests out. Although we never spoke, we communicated with each other with our eyes. They never saw me, because neither I, nor my boyfriend ever put on the lights in the house.

After this scene we left to go somewhere together by car. I knew where we were going and had the road planned out before me. But as soon as I started the car and drove off from home I took another road. It was still nighttime, but there was something strange about the dark night. It was so dark that I felt like a blindman behind the steering wheel. Even when I put my headlights on, they were so dim in that blackness that I could hardly see the road ahead of me. Within minutes we were outside of the city and driving through a hilly forrested country, much like the road above in the picture. 

Though I knew we weren't on the correct road I persisted to continue the way we had taken, hoping to come across a split that would take me to the correct area. That never happened in the dream of course. We just ended up in the outback, the Ardennes. This hill, forrested country in South Belgium is over two hours drive away from my home, and thus not the intended twenty-minutes-drive-away suburb we had planned to go. 

Eventually the road ended as a grassfield driveway of a 19th century looking, restorated farm, with a brick arch as entry into the farm courtyard. I parked the car at the cow gate of the property, walked through the wet grass towards the arch at the courtyard, finally ready to ask for directions and help. As before, it was hard to see where I was going. The strange blinding blackness persisted. I never went beyond the arch. It was clear there was noone awake at the property, except for two farmyard dogs that came running towards me, barking. 

I halted my approach as soon as I heard the barking coming closer. In real life I'm rather nervous around dogs, because I've been bitten twice by dogs when I was a child. And I felt the same nervousness come up initially until I actually saw the dogs. The male was of medium height, hazel brown coat, of undefined race, and the second one - white female - looked like a pet lapdog. Their barking did not sound threatening once they were in sight, and they came up to me with their tails wagging. To my own surprise I petted both of them on the head, before I turned around and walked back to the car and leave the farm in peace. The dogs accompanied (or guided) me back to my car. 

As I arrived at the wooden cow gate, several women passed the car and crossed my path. They struck me as women experienced in being married, having a family, run a household, etc... And I addressed one, the woman closest to me, explaining that somehow I had taken the wrong turn and had ended up here while instead I wanted to go to xxxx (my initially planned suburb destination). 

She smiled sympathetically, and the women were very helpful, giving me all sorts of tips, signs to look for to drive back to the point where I had taken the wrong turn and find my way to where I wanted to go. As they explained, I could see the correct roads, the correct area, the correct destination in my mind. I thanked them, stepped into the car and woke up.

This dream was about my relationship and what was happening to it on an emotional plain for me. The most important message of the dream was the half-blindness and the lost feeling of not knowing where we were going except the wrong direction.

The dream starts with an example of little things between us, while living together that caused friction: bringing strangers into our home (previous my home) while I was asleep after a night out. I don't like it, because it makes me feel exposed. My home is a place to feel comfortable and relaxed, to rest from work, from stress, from expectations from people, etc. And disturbing my sleep makes me moody on top. My boyfriend did this twice when he first moved in, and the dream was at least a month after that. He had already come to respect my wish to not have guests over when I was already asleep, but it was one of those experiences stored away as cause for frustration. The disturbance of my sleep though was something that occurred weekly, although he had started to try and respect my rest in actuality already. In the dream the feelings of annoyance were never felt. But since these events occurred in the dream before our drive into the wrong direction, I take the past events as the identified cause or point in time when our relationship was heading for possible loss.

Significant seems the feeling of surety where I thought we would be going: an easy route, only a short distanced off, a route I supposed I could drive almost blind or without thinking. And yet we ended up in an unknown, unfamiliar territory, lost our way that ended at a standstill, a dead end. I started my relationship with a leap of faith, I had experienced our ability to support each other even when events were not easy, I had experienced our ability and effort to communicate in a loving way, even when we didn't like what the other had done. It were these things that made me choose to have him come from the other side of the world and live with me. Even though we are in many ways different, we both know how to relate consciously with others in a manner that is needed to make a relationship work on a day to day basis.

However, in practice for the past three months this turned out to be very difficult. Yes, I had reasons to be upset with him at times, and he had reasons to feel at a loss in how I communicated this upsetness. Yes, the two people in a relationship have the right to express how they feel and have the other respect their basic wishes. We needed to find these things out, make clear to each other what we needed, what we wanted respected, where our barriers lay. The problem was how we ended up only doing that. We barely expressed positive feelings anymore. Instead we were only expressing what we did not like, how we didn't want things to be. And when this is not backed up with positive examples of what we do like, of what we appreciate the good things that are, it's only normal that you start to feel "It's all negative. Why are we still together at all?"

That is how I felt at the time when I had this dream. I saw myself as a bitch who whined all the time, who could not give anymore. I had turned into a person I did not want to be, the opposite of who I had been the past ten years, and that in two months time. Feeling like that, also made me very insecure. How could someone want to stay with me if I was like this? I did not like who I had become, so I could hardly expect him to like it. And well, he too was moping, and negative. It had become a total mystery why on earth we even said we loved each other, and I could not believe he could feel this way about me with both our negative feedback day in and day out. My insecurity, my fears of losing him were represented by the forrested road. The sole negative feedback was the wrong road, making us lose our way. How responsible I felt about our relationship turning badly was represented by me at the driving wheel. And it resulted in this feeling of close to breaking up represented with the dead end at the farm.

The dream served to help me identify the problem, to accept how lost I felt and to see whether we could solve it or accept that all was lost. That it all happened at night showed how big of a problem it had become to solve. It would not be easy. The semi-blindness and inability to shed enough light on the road reflected in one way the panicky feelings of "help, I don't know what I'm doing," as well as the refusal to recognize the true cause and trouble we were in. The latter too was reflected in my persistence to continue on the wrong road, instead of turning back and reconnect with a more familiar area where I could find my way again. And lastly it showed a blind trust on my driving abilities that was unwarranted.

Finally, when I recognize that I am at the stage where we cannot continue this "way" anymore, I start to explore to find help. The help comes in two disguises: the two dogs and the more experienced married women who have been running a family and households for much longer than I have done. Dogs stand for fidelity and loyalty. They also stand for intuition. That they were benign then reveals that my unconscious would help to solve the problem, and hints at our mutual persistance to have stuck together this far, because we share basic values of fidelity and loyalty to each other. The barking may have been a pun at some of our fights: a lot of noise to warn the other partner they were treeading on our territory, but no true mean intent towards each other. The most significant event regarding the dogs was how they guided me back to the car. Dogs in dreams are also protectors, and in that way a sign of aid to come to protect my relationship. Meeting the dogs, their happy response to me was the first moment in the dream that actually felt good. It gave me the hope that things would turn out well, gave me the courage to return to the car and helped me to open up to aid, help and suggestions. It is no surprise that the night's darkness did not bother me anymore, and the feeling of blindness had lifted.

The married women's advice was simple: go back to where you took the wrong turn, then you will come to more familiar ground and will find your way again and find your intended destination. In the days that followed after this dream, my mind was preoccupied in identifying how I had come to feel so lost regarding the relationship: the almost constant negative feedback, with too litte positive feedback to balance it out. Once I realized the actual communication problem, I instantly realized what I needed to do and what I needed from him to resolve my negative emotions. And so I suggested to him that perhaps for a while it would help the both of us to try and express ourselves only in a positive way. The irony of the actual events is that I suggested this while we were driving, with me at the steering wheel.

At first he reacted rather negative to my general suggestion. He didn't understand what I meant, nor what the problem was. I then told him by example, how it made me feel loved when he touched me affectionately, how it enabled me to take in his negative feelings about my own actions in the past when he communicated "please don't do this anymore," when at the same time he stroked my cheek and look into my eyes with love and understanding. And right after I said that he put his hand on my leg affectionately. It made me feel better instantly. And over the days after we both reinforced our positive loving feelings for each other in this way. The healing and solution was rapid and amazingly easy. Within days I was able to offer to interrupt my own doings at home to go to the shop for him and get him something, even though he could have done it himself easily, when I noticed he was tired, and that without him asking me to, let alone ask me repeatedly. His face had such a surprised pleased look that it made me remember to repeat such a small non-spoken offer of love next time. And though there were frustrations over the days and weeks after for the both of us in our daily life events, we had found a way to not have it turn negatively onto each other, and instead support each other again both in our own way that makes the other feel loved.

Right now he is back in Nicaragua, because his maximum allowed stay was near expiration. But we are also engaged, and I have confidence again that it is based on something real and workable. I do not fear I may have made the wrong decision anymore and do not wish to ever have to be parted from him again.