The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (19 page)

BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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pendent-thinking couple.'' These kinds of statements can be very helpful when partners make assumptions about each other's behavior in waking life, as Karen did in her dream. Both the dream and the couple proclamation can serve as a red flag to remind them of their commitment in the face of old patterns and fears.
Fear of being known and rejected: Being in a committed relationship often brings up the fear that your partner will see you as you truly are, will not like what he or she sees, and will then reject you. This can lead to artificial or uncomfortable interactions, as one or both partners inhibit their true self-expression. Dianne was alerted to her concern by the following dream:
The Hairpiece
I am trying to put on a hairpiece. It has a comb on it that is supposed to hold it on, but it isn't staying in place very well. Now the hairpiece falls off, and I find that all my hair has fallen out underneath it, leaving a big bald spot. I am very upset.
These were Dianne's thoughts after the dream:
I realized that this dream is about having a hard time acting naturally around my boyfriend. I'm afraid that if he gets to know me too well, he might not like me the way I am underneaththe way I really am. I know I'm acting artificial, like the hairpiece, but I can't seem to stopI feel so naked and vulnerable underneath.
Dianne could share this dream with her boyfriend as a way to open the topic of her anxiety about being herself with him.
 
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She could begin with a proclamation like, ''I am fully self-expressed," and then expand it into a couple vision that they create together, such as "We are fully expressed with each other."
The Reinforcement of Commitment
Review Your Commitment
We need to revisit and renew our vision of couple continually over the life of our relationships. Once is definitely not enough where commitment to couple is concerned. Without those constant reminders, the vision will quickly disappear, just like our dreams. Creating new proclamations is important, not as a way to evaluate or "vote" on how the relationship is going, but as a way to revitalize its possibilities and strengths.
Dreams can point out when the vision needs attention. Christine, who runs a construction business with her husband, Tom, has a recurring dream of building their couple's home together. She can tell how well they're doing in maintaining their relationship by looking at the status of the house in her dreams. When they're not working together well on the house in the dream, it's always a clue as to what's missing in their waking life. The dream becomes a monitor of when they need a fresh proclamation for their couple commitment. Sharing the dreams with Tom, Christine says, "helped us both realize what was going on and opened up the lines of communication. We saw that we had neglected our 'house,' so to speak, our marriagea work in progress. We saw that we had abandoned this valuable thing that we had been making together." In her latest dream, Christine finds their home finished"a lovely, orderly country house with a long porch, rocking chairs, and bright bedrooms." Feeling complete for now, she is no longer having
 
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this dream, as is often the case around a conflict that shows up in a recurring dream.
When you take a new look at re-committing to your couple, you can see the strange and wonderful things about each other that you may have been ignoring or taking for granted. One woman got a clue about how she and her husband of ten years could create the vision of their couple continuously from the following dream:
The Stranger
I am outside by myself when I see a stranger walking toward me. As he comes closer, I see that it is my husband. I am pleased and excited and feel happy.
Seeing the "strangeness" of her husband allowed this woman to rekindle her positive feelings for him. Perhaps we can all keep the excitement alive in our couple relationships by seeing our partners as strangers whom we are always getting to know better. Then we can continually re-commit to each other each time we "meet."
Create a Concrete Representation of Your Commitment
Another way to reinforce the power of your proclamation is to display it in some special way. Research shows that using a variety of sensations in our experience helps us better remember things. If you add visualizing, touching, or smelling, for instance, to the statements you have made and heard, it will increase their power and your ability to remember them. (It's the same with our nighttime dreams: The more details of taste, sound, smell, color, and so on you notice, the more the dream will come to life.) Without tangible reminders, our visions

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