The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (6 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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the point of the shaft rather than at the end, the thing would work! The result was the first sewing machine. The dreaming mind fed an idea to the waking one, and the results changed textile history forever.
The sharing of your dreams can help solve problems and bring new possibilities for you as a couple: Your spouse's dream may give you an idea for a vacation, a theme for a party, or a fantasy for the bedroom. No matter what their content, sharing your dreams together will enhance your ability to understand each other and yourself.
Daydreams
In Western culture, lucid dreaming is rare. Daydreams may be the closest experience many of us have to these "I know I'm dreaming" dreams. In daydreams, we follow seemingly random fantasies from here to there. Imagine it is the day before you leave on vacation. Perhaps you take a moment as you pack your swimsuit to picture yourself lying on the beach or sitting by the pool. How will you look in this outfit? Does it match your surroundings? Maybe you are looking around that setting in your mind's eye. Will you need sandals or tennis shoes? This is a dream of sorts, but it doesn't just come to you; you make it up. After you imagine part of it, the rest of the image and story seem to fall into place.
Though we usually may not ask ourselves "Why this?" or "Why that?" when we have a daydream, we can apply the principles of dreamwork to our daydreams and learn more about ourselves and each other. By providing windows into our unconscious psychological life, daydreams offer not only more "dream" to work with, but also an opportunity to direct a dream, to participate in it by confronting the characters and
 
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objects that appear in it. If you think about the daydreams you have, many of them portray the happiest possible outcome. They create the possibility of something beautiful, exciting, and harmonious.
In the case of the daydream about packing for your vacation, the weather is probably nice, your mood is good, and the conditions for fun and gratification are good. In having this picture of the upcoming trip, the daydreamer creates a vision of the future based on the best possible outcome. Just thinking about it may bring a smile to your face. Oddly enough, it may not even be important that this picture come to pass; you have already had some enjoyment from just imagining it. (Not that you'll cancel your travel plans! But you can take a mental vacation anytime you need one.)
Couples who can share their daydreams share their imagination and ideas of the future. They are also enjoying the present while they are recounting these images of possibility. When you learn to share your dreams and daydreams with your partner, it produces a feeling of closeness not often available elsewhere in our daily lives. For men especially, who often have trouble with the direct expression of feelings and closeness, talking about dreams and daydreams gives them a vehicle to express themselves more openly and helps them learn about another dimension of their personality without feeling intimidated.
Jack has been working late hours. He often gets home after Betsy, his wife of three years, is in bed asleep. He never tries to wake her because he already feels guilty about not getting home earlier. He misses the snuggling and tickling they used to do. He feels upset, frustrated, and hurt, all at the same time. When driving home one night, he had a daydream while waiting for a stoplight to change. It lasted only a few seconds but was very vivid and moving to him.
 
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I walk through the front door of the house. Betsy is standing there in her see-through nightgown, the one I gave her on our anniversary. She is smiling a coy and wonderful smile. I am overcome by the smell of perfume. A grin spreads on my face from ear to ear.
A car horn sounds, and Jack notices that the light has changed. When Jack gets home, he is still thinking about the image of Betsy in her lingerie. He actually feels a little disappointed that she is not standing in the foyer when he quietly opens the front door. In the morning, Betsy asks when Jack got in. He says it was late. He decides to share his daydream from the evening before. "Sweetheart," he begins, "yesterday when I was driving home, I had a daydream about coming home and having you meet me at the door in that sexy nightgown I bought you. I really miss that sort of time with you since I have had to work so late."
Betsy's eyes sparkle as she asks for all the details of what he had imagined the night before. He describes not only how she looks to him, but how he misses seeing her that way. She gives him a warm hug and kiss and promises to surprise him some time by making his daydream come true. He laughs and blushes a little.
You may feel like dismissing daydreams as inconsequential or meaningless, but don't. Exploring their content can be similar to working with any other sort of dream. Though we may start thinking about a scenario because of some mundane action (brushing your hair) or object (your suitcase full of cruisewear), the fire this real action or object sparks has dream content of its own. Planning your wardrobe for an upcoming vacation becomes a daydream when some of the "facts" (the beach, the ocean) inspire a fantasy: You see yourself walking along the beach, feeling the warmth of the sun, and the spray of the ocean.
 
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Visioning dreams
For their tenth anniversary, Rod and Sandy received an interesting present from a friend: a free gift certificate to meet with a financial planner. During the entire time they have been married, they haven't done much financial planning, except to start a small college fund for their daughter, Jenny. They decide to make an appointment just for fun. They do not think of themselves as wealthy at all. In fact, they work very hard just to make ends meet, Sandy as an administrative assistant and Rod as a construction foreman. They feel almost sheepish about going to see someone to plan their financial future. When they arrive, the planner asks them what they want to be doing in twenty-five years. She tells them to write down a set of financial goals about how much money they would like to have, where they want to live, and what they want to be doing with their free time.
Rod and Sandy look at each other quizzically; they have never really discussed these issues. It seems as though they have had to deal with everything that is going on in the present before they can even think about the future. They just thought the future would take care of itself. Although the planner was addressing their financial goals, to Rod and Sandy, this discussion was more about the dreams they have for the future.
Unlike sleeping dreams or even daydreams, visioning dreams are consciously constructed to depict our future after we've achieved a certain set of goals. Whereas night dreams or daydreams may be random or totally without a basis in reality, visioning dreams are built on the foundation of your own actual experience. For instance, say you've taken up doubles tennis together, and you create a visioning dream of competing in amateur doubles matches five years from now. Or say you've given birth to a baby girl, and you create a visioning dream of an open, loving family life together in which you share mealtimes and take weekend trips.
 
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As a couple, you can invent a future for yourselves that is much more specific than merely "happily ever after." Visioning dreams are designed by us to imagine the future as we would like it to be. Your visioning dreams can include goals and fantasies you would like to reach. You create a vision of an event that you would like to happen. In some cases, you can then go about making that vision come true.
Monica and Luis went to Wyoming for a weeklong vacation last winter. While taking a walk near the ski slopes, they saw a little chalet with a For Sale sign on it. Luis said, "I would love to have a little place like this where we could come to get away, ski, and just be together." Out loud they imagined sitting by the fireplace, walking out into the brisk morning air, and making love in the cozy bedroom by the wood stove. They said to each other, "We will have a ski cottage." They picked up a price sheet with a description of the property, and although it was more money than they had to spend, they started to plan how to save for it. Luis and Monica became excited when they realized that their vision of the future could come true if they saved money for only a few years.
Are visioning dreams merely escapism? Or do these vivid visions help your dreams for the future become reality? We think the latter is true. Consider the following examples.
In 1962, President John E Kennedy announced that the United States would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. As he spoke, heand his fellow countrymencould picture a human being walking on the lunar surface. Yet when he made this speech, no one knew specifically how it could be done. A rocket had not yet been produced to carry that heavy a payload, and many of the details of such a mission had yet to be considered. The effect of Kennedy's statement, however, was to create a vision of how the world might be in the future. It was a
 
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visioning dream. Once stated, or more accurately, once proclaimed publicly, this visioning dream caused people to begin seeing the world differently. With the possibility of reaching the moon so close at hand (because the president said so), new resources were generated, new technology invented, all to bring this vision into being. These resources might not have emerged without President Kennedy's visioning dream. He made it happen by sharing his dream out loud. Where did Kennedy get the idea that reaching the moon so soon was a possibility? Many say he just made it up. He was a visionary with a dream.
The framers of the American system of government began with the Declaration of Independence. It spoke of the vision, or dream, of independence. It imagined a world of democracy and equality where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were possible. Did the signers of this document know that this state of affairs was likely to come to pass, or did they just "dream" it? Their visioning dream created the world we live in now. They designed the future by creating a vision and declaring it in the present. Abraham Lincoln proclaimed freedom for the slaves, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a "dream" of a world where equality existed among all people. Speaking about these visions, "proclaiming them," helps them to come true. These kinds of dreams also can help us to feel optimistic during difficult times.
When Rod and Sandy were asked to make a financial plan, they had the opportunity to have a visioning dream about their future, to design it in an important way. Creating visioning dreams means more than goal setting. Couples can use these dreams to reach new levels of fulfillment together, imaginingand bringing into beingthe future of their retirement, their summer plans, their parenting experience, their ideal home, even their sex life. Unlike most dreams and daydreams, which

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