The Vine: November 19, 2008
Dear Sars,
Since I found out a few weeks ago that my ex became single again, I have been dreaming about him.Not in passing cameos, but long elaborate dreams full of longing looks, “accidental” touching, and each of us trying to figuring out how to meet somewhere in secret.These dreams culminate in him telling me how sorry he was for ending things, that he never should have tried to make it work with his ex (the girl who came before and after me), and he knows how horrible it is that he’s telling me this now because of my boyfriend…
Oh right.I have a boyfriend.A great guy who is usually curled up next to me as I frantically try to return to dreamworld so I’m back in the arms of my ex.
I can’t figure out what to do.The likelihood of me getting back with the ex is slim to none, starting with the very basic fact that he is now single because she didn’t want to move with him halfway across the country next summer, and I wouldn’t either.This entirely ignores the questions of whether he would actually be interested (we have not had the pleasure of discussing it), or whether, ultimately, I want him back.So that’s not really the issue.
What is the issue?My boyfriend.This is a guy that I have a strong suspicion I’m going to marry, who takes care of me when I’m sick and cranky (as I have been for most of the past month), who makes me laugh, likes my cats, my friends all adore, and who I’m totally happy curled up with on a Saturday night watching movies and eating Chinese delivery.He is a quality human being and I love him.
But these dreams, and my desperate desire to keep them going, are causing me to pause.I can’t figure out how to tell him “we need to talk about the status of our relationship because my subconscious can’t stop thinking about my ex” without sounding like a raging bitch.But I can’t seem to make my subconscious stop thinking about my ex and I can’t convince myself that they’re just silly dreams.
Any thoughts for me?Direction?Ass-kickings?
I Never Dream About My Boyfriend
Dear I Never Dream About Your Boyfriend Either,
You don’t tell your boyfriend anything.Honesty in a relationship is important; kindness, however, is more important, and giving your BF information that is only going to cause him pain, and won’t resolve your feelings either way but rather will only complicate your confusion, is not the solution here.
First of all, and I’ve said it before, this just happens, even in happy relationships — people get inappropriate crushes, or have dreams (sometimes plural) about exes they thought they’d put well behind them.It doesn’t make you a bad person, and it doesn’t mean your current relationship is destined to end because you don’t think about, dream about, or fantasize about your boyfriend every minute.It doesn’t mean your subconscious is telling you to try to get back with your ex.
But it does mean your subconscious is trying to tell you something, or that you have an unconscious desire to return to the situation with your ex so that you can “get it right” this time.”The girl who came before and after me” is, to my mind, pretty much the whole story here.It’s not about your ex himself; it’s about you wanting to prove something to yourself about your ability to attract/affect the guy.
And that just happens sometimes too; there’s nothing wrong with it, and you should give yourself a break, but it is about you, and you are the one who is going to have to deal with it — taking a few counseling sessions, journaling, whatever, waiting for it to pass, which it most likely will.But it’s not about your boyfriend either, and telling him it’s going on is needlessly hurtful to him, and not productive for you.
Think about what unfinished business you might have had with your ex.Think about whether you see any patterns there.Finish the business and break the patterns, or don’t, but don’t call your ex or try to get in touch with him, and don’t make this your boyfriend’s problem — he doesn’t need to know, and in a couple of weeks, there probably won’t be anything to know.
Dear Sars —
I am not sure if I need advice or just an impartial observer to kick me in the pants.I am getting married in two weeks.I got engaged about 5 months ago.I have one brother with 3 kids; my fiancé has 4 siblings and 2 nieces.We are both older (he’s over 40; I’ll be 40 soon).We did not ask any of the nieces and nephews to be in the wedding; instead the wedding party is all adults — mostly friends and one of my future brothers-in-law.
When I first talked to my brother about the wedding, I told him about the “no children in the wedding party” thing (4 months ago) and he seemed fine about it.There was a possibility we would ask all five children to participate but that never happened.I didn’t want as many children as adults in the wedding party and wanted to try to keep it small; I asked my 3 closest friends to be bridesmaids.
When I asked my brother to read something at the wedding, he wanted me to ask his oldest son (13 years old) instead.I told him that we didn’t want to single out and have only one of the children participate, and I would really prefer him to do it.He agreed but didn’t seem too happy about it. My fiancé’s sister is also a reader and one of his other brothers is singing.
When I sent the email invite about the rehearsal dinner and noted that there were other ways that maybe the kids could participate (ringing the bells at church or holding the door for me to walk down the aisle), my sister-in-law responded that they aren’t coming to the rehearsal dinner.My brother is coming alone but the kids (6, 11 and 13) have commitments that night (it is a Friday) and that the kids will sit “with us as a family” at the wedding.
I responded that it was important to me to have family there and hoped that if their schedules changed that they could make it. No reply yet.There is a long history of my mom and me feeling somewhat rejected/unincluded since my brother got married but I am not sure how important any of that is.I know that I am not the greatest aunt — I send birthday gifts and go up when invited for holidays, but I only had them to my house once and I do not try to attend school events or visit them that often.They live only 45 minutes away.
I have spent the past day vacillating between being really hurt that they aren’t coming, thinking that I deserve for them to not be interested in the rehearsal dinner and meeting my future in-laws because I didn’t ask them to be in the wedding in greater roles or be more involved in their lives and perhaps that was hurtful to them (as much as their not coming is hurtful to me), and being angry that the response to not getting larger roles that they might have wanted for their children in the wedding is to decide not to participate except as absolutely necessary. There is a chance that there really is a conflict but how serious are the social commitments of a 6-, 11- or 13-year-old?The response that they aren’t coming felt like a slap in the face.
My request is how to make this better.The wedding is 2 weeks away so changing it and having the 5 kids participate now is out of the question.Even ignoring his nieces and having only my brother’s kids just won’t work now.I had been considering having my mom walk me down the aisle so my brother wouldn’t be walking my mom in (there’s no dad in the picture) but now I am not sure about that either.Do I call and just say that I am sorry for not including them and ask that they reconsider this?Ignore it for now and just go forward with a greater effort? My mom says ignore it.
I know that my wedding isn’t as important to other people, so I think my mom is right — the best course is to just ignore it, go forward and try to make a bigger effort to be in touch with them later.Or just move on.I don’t know. I have friends who have been wonderful and offered to help with a ton of things or just been so happy for us, regardless of whether we asked them to have a place of honor.I just assumed that my family would feel the same way…
Am I a bridezilla?
Dear No, But You Can’t Have Your Wedding Cake And Eat It Too,
You didn’t want the kids in the wedding, which is fine; why do you care whether they come to the rehearsal, then?You say yourself that you don’t make much of an effort with the kids, which is also fine, but if you aren’t close with the kids and you wouldn’t have asked them to participate in the wedding as a matter of course, why would you get pissed that they made other plans?
Because they probably did; they probably didn’t actually make some shit up to hurt your feelings.Kids do have things to do on Friday nights sometimes — sports practice, birthday parties, what have you — and a rehearsal dinner is about as boring as an event can be for a child in the second place.And…you’re not close with them.Who cares?
Yeah, I know: you care.Ask yourself why.Ask yourself why, if you don’t make a big effort in their direction most of the time, you expect them to make a big effort in your direction on a day when the bulk of their family will just be average guests.Then ask yourself why you’re proposing to bend over backwards making it up to them — so that they’ll participate on your terms, and you’ll get to feel more loved?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting everyone to feel included, and at the same time to go along with the wedding you envision for yourself without having to do a bunch of family politicking, but 1) it’s not realistic to expect it, and 2) it’s not realistic given the relationship you’ve described to me between you and your brother/his family.Yes, a wedding is a special day, but everyone’s the same people with the same feelings about each other, and your brother and his kids are, to my mind, acting accordingly.If you spent a lot of time with the kids and you’d wanted from the jump to have them do stuff in the ceremony, well, then their parents would be dicks for scheduling them on the rehearsal-dinner night — but you don’t, and you didn’t, and you kind of can’t expect any different from them.This is the relationship.
If you want to get closer to your brother, or talk with him about the feelings of exclusion you and your mom have felt in the last 10 or 15 years, by all means, do that — but do it outside of the wedding conversation, and do it for its own sake and not because you feel slighted by them. They aren’t slighting you; they’re responding to your stated plans for the event.
You say your brother “didn’t seem too happy about” doing the reading.Unless he said something directly to you, accept that he’s doing as you’ve asked, and drop it.I think you’re expecting to fix feelings of estrangement from that family while still wanting them to fall in line with your wedding-party arrangements.That won’t happen.Move forward with the wedding you want, and address the relationship you want with your brother et al. later, but this isn’t a can of worms wants opening right now.
Hi Sars,
I have a sort of weird grammar/feminism question for you that I thought perhaps, only Sars could answer.
I’ve recently gone back to school, in London, and as I’m an American, I’ve had to get used to my share of strange-to-me spelling and expressions, but this one is really bugging me:
I’ve noticed a propensity to “[sic]” quotes that involve a reference to man/mankind.
As in: “All men [sic] are created equal.” Or “One giant step for mankind [sic].”
Sars, I’m an ardent feminist, but this seems so unnecessary to me. I thought “[sic]” was used to denote a grammar error, not to denote the evolution of the English language.
Moreover, as a feminist, there’s something that makes me downright uneasy about this. To me, the “[sic]” is almost re-writing history. I love Thomas Jefferson, but I don’t think he thought women were equal to men. So in a sense, by putting a “[sic]” there, you are actually changing the original intent behind the statement. I’m glad perceptions and society have changed over time, but I think we need to be aware that it wasn’t always the case. If you’re going to indicate “[sic]” every time you see the word “mankind,” should we also do so every time we see the “n-word” in Huck Finn?
Am I wrong? Is the “[sic]” warranted here? Is this a weird British thing? When I write papers, must I indicate a “[sic]” anytime I quote someone who references mankind? Am I a bad feminist for finding this utterly silly?
Thanks,
Sick of [sic]
Dear Sic[k],
As you no doubt already know, “[sic],” which should always appear in italics, is a Latin word meaning “thus” or “so,” and its usage within a text indicates, per Garner, “that a preceding word or phrase in a quoted passage is reproduced as it appeared in the original document.”
Garner goes on to say that it’s “intended to aid readers, who might be confused about whether the quoter or the quoted writer is responsible for the spelling or grammatical anomaly,” and that “its use has skyrocketed since the mid-20th century.”
This is my sense of it, and I think yours too — that the expression indicates a usage mistake, and that employing it to distance the author from dated or offensive epithets and attitudes in the quoted material is too broad a mandate.
I don’t think this is a British-English issue, so much as the authors in question wanting to make sure readers know that they don’t approve of gendered language.My feeling generally is that insisting to a fault on terms like “chairperson” and “humanity” (vs. “mankind”) misses the point somewhat; sure, be aware of gendered language, but you can’t let it swamp the boat of every sentence or written argument.
If this is the intended use, a blanket disclaimer somewhere at the beginning of a series of quotations that reminds the reader that all the “him”s and “man”s do not reflect the author’s beliefs about gendered pronouns is probably a better solution — not least because it’s so petty-seeming when it’s written out like that that ideally the author would realize it’s not worth the trouble.If you can’t trust your readers to understand that quoting Mark Twain using the N-word doesn’t make you, or Twain, a racist, well, you’ve got bigger problems with your writing than “[sic]” can solve.
For the record, though, a “[sic]” attached to “…and one giant leap for mankind” is, while somewhat trifling, not incorrect.The actual quotation is “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”; Armstrong forgot the “a”before “man.”Most people already know that story and forgive him the redundancy — I’d have forgotten every word but “fuuuuuuuuuuck” if I were stepping onto the moon — but he did biff the line, so a “[sic]” is okay.
Tags: boys (and girls) grammar the fam
I’m the mom of 7 and 10 year old boys. Not only are they often booked on a Friday night with sleepovers, lazer tag, school events, camping, not to even get into the scheduling for baseball practice and games for two kids on two different teams, but even if there were no actual commitments – we’re all exhausted by Friday night. I assure you that the very last thing a child wants to do on a Friday night is go to what is usually a semi-formal event, be the only children there, and be on good behavior well past the standard bed time. And the last thing you should want is a harried parent, who may or may not already be aggravated with you, forced to attend her sister-in-law’s rehearsal dinner with three tired, most likely cranky, children and a roomful of adults she probably doesn’t know. Do yourself a favor, and let sleeping dogs lie.
I would be hurt if somebody wasn’t bringing their kids to the wedding because the kids weren’t IN the wedding. But not bringing them to the rehearsal dinner? That’s supposed to be a followup event to a rehearsal — sort of paying you off for having to show up and be told where to stand and when to sit — so if any of the invitees doesn’t actually need to rehearse, it’s one of those things where they are totally allowed to say, “Thanks! But no thanks,” and not have that response carry any heavy, hidden meaning.
@Dreaming of Ex: agreeing with everything Sars said, since the subconscious can be a good indicator of feeling, it might also NOT be a big deal (which you might figure out by following Sars’ advice). I am a married woman, have never cheated on my husband, and I sometimes have crazy dreams and fantasies about other men. I used to get all stressed out about it until I realized they were only dreams and fantasies; i.e. NOT REAL. I didn’t ever approach the men in question, because (I realized) I didn’t really want to. You can make any guy into The Perfect Guy in your head; reality is very different. It’s not something you need to make yourself feel guilty over, especially if you can appreciate what you have. Sars is right — maybe there IS a problem here you need to address, but not necessarily. If you can separate crazy dream from real relationship, it’s not worth either bringing it up or feeling guilty over.
Sic[k] – I’m English and have never noticed this. I think it’s probably the academic circles you keep rather than a British/English thing. I hope so, anyway :o)
Dream, this happened to me recently too. One of my exes just got married, and we kind of reconnected after a long period of being out of touch (and a somewhat less long period of hating each others’ guts) when he filled me in on the wedding stuff. I’m over the breakup and genuinely wish him well — sent a gift, even. But after talking to him in a significant way for the first time in years, and thinking about him more, I started having similar dreams where we were on crazy adventures together and they were really fun and aww, why am I not with this guy? They passed after a couple of weeks, and it’s no big thing. My current boyfriend is cool so I’m happy with where I’ve ended up, but sometimes life makes your brain go off on its own tangents.
Bridezilla (not that you are one), I see no point in asking kids as young as 6 to attend a wedding rehearsal when they’re not going to be in the wedding. There’s nothing for them to rehearse, and they’ll be bored and antsy watching the adults rehearse and eating a dinner that probably won’t include chicken fingers or mac ‘n’ cheese. Try not to take it personally. Put yourself in the kids’ and parents’ shoes and you may find that it’s better to not have to deal with the children at this event. I agree with Sars that you may feel like there are other underlying family issues here, but the time to approach those is after the wedding is over, when you can evaluate the kind of relationship you want to have with these people without it being colored by your wedding preparations.
I’m not sure Armstrong’s statement was an error – yeah, there should be an “a” in there, but my impression was that he did include it – it just got clipped out, because one-syllable words like that don’t always transmit well over long distances on the radio.
I got married in May and there were a ton of things that people did that really hurt my feelings immediately before the wedding because I was in such a heightened state of anxiety about the whole affair. Now, though, I realize that everyone else had their own lives to worry about and that none of what they did was directed towards me or was a reflection of their feelings about me, my now-husband or our wedding.
So my advice is to not worry about the kids not coming to the rehearsal now, focus on making the day as wonderful as possible, and consider in a couple weeks whether you’re satisfied with the relationship you have with your brother’s family. If not, work on being closer. If so, carry on.
@ Bride – If the kids weren’t involved in the wedding, I assume the parents would assume the kids wouldn’t necessarily be invited to the wedding rehearsal. (In fact, I can imagine a letter in which the bride complains that the parents rudely expected the kids to come the rehearsal dinner when the kids were expressly not included in the wedding.) So, I would try not to take that part personally unless they made some huge drama about it.
As far as your brother offering his kid in his place, is it possible that he’s shy about public speaking and was just trying to get out of it? Not that he was trying to shove his kid into the wedding? Don’t know him, wasn’t there, just a guess. Is the offered nephew an outgoing kid? Perhaps getting into speech or debate in school?
I don’t put too much stock in sex dreams; they’re totally random, like most other dreams. One time I dreamed that I gained thirty pounds, cloned myself, and then had sex with the clone. What’s THAT supposed to mean?
@ INDAMB, you might also consider the potential for dreams to be metaphorical, not literal. I’ve often heard that the literal events of a dream are not so important as the underlying themes or personal meanings. So if you’re dreaming about your ex, it might simply be a nostalgia for a different time in your life, a desire for vindication/validation in some area of your life (from work to family to friend conflicts), an indication that you are craving non-romantic excitement or adventure, or just a primitive desire to feel in control of a situation instead of at the whims of fate.
There is also, of course, the line of thinking that dreams are just mental detritus strung together with a sort of fabricated logic. So you can take solace in that too, if you’d like.
I just wanted to say ‘word’ on the advice to Not a Bridezilla. They also might have been thinking of sparing you the expense of the extra folks at the rehersal dinner and sparing you from having bored kids there. But what Sars said about not having your cake and eating it, too, was spot on.
(Not) Bridezilla, from reading between lines in your letter (and anyone can tell me if they think I’m reading totally the wrong thing), I get the sense that there are parts of your family and your fiance’s family that are All About the Kids, you aren’t, and you’re trying to reconcile those two things at this late date. Perhaps you’re doing it to build more of a relationship with your brother, perhaps you’re not.
Most of my in-laws are All About the Kids, and since my husband and I don’t have any, I’m not (All About the Cats on the other hand…). Sometimes I feel really out of place at family gatherings because of it. But I’ve accepted that’s okay. That’s not the focus of my life right now, and I’m not going to make it be just to have an “in” with the relatives.
If this is what’s going on with you, it’s okay. Maybe your brother is a little put out because sometimes people who are All About the Kids don’t get people who aren’t. Or maybe his head’s too full of keeping his brood out of trouble. It’s your day, it’s about what you want, you’re not being a stampeding Bridezilla about it, so I don’t think there’s any reason to feel bad. Also, I agree with everyone else about parking kids at a boring event. It’s asking for trouble.
If it still bothers you, maybe you can reach out to the kids after the wedding. Bring them back souvenirs from your honeymoon, attend their events, offer to host birthday parties at your place, whatever you’re comfortable with.
And congrats on the wedding!
@ Joe Mama – Bwah ha ha ha!!! THANK YOU. I needed that.
@ Dream – Dreams are dreams – no matter how hot/exciting/amazing they are when you’re asleep. you may try to get back to sleep to continue them, but they are not your life. They may also indicate something OTHER than the obvious. I myself have been having all sorts of sex dreams lately, about men other than my fiance (we’re getting married next month). Rather than worrying that the indication is that there’s a problem with my relationship, I’ve figured out that it’s because I am missing sex (I’m also pregnant and usually too sick or too tired to do anything about it. Looking forward to the 2nd trimester.)
@ Bridezilla – Weddings are funny events, even for family. Don’t make it too stressful on yourself – let it go. When it comes to other peoples’ kids, you can rarely win. Further, if you’re not a part of the kids’ daily lives, they may not end up filling the “role” you expect them to anyway.
If you’re really concerned with your relationship with your brother and his family, it would probably be better to wait until AFTER the wedding to repair it. Use your wedding as a jumping off point – invite them to your home for a casual (read: kid-friendly) dinner to watch the video, see the pictures, hear about the honeymoon, etc.
Good luck with your wedding and, more importantly, your marriage.
NotZilla, just to say–you’re not a bad person for not having/adoring kids.
The between-the-lines thing I got (stringy in there) is that your life isn’t particularly kid-centered, nor do you especially want it to be, but your siblings’ are, and I think this whole wedding anxiety is mixing beautifully with your family dramatics to produce a last minute panic.
Not wanting kids at your wedding DOES NOT MAKE YOU BAD. It doesn’t make you a bad aunt, it doesn’t make you a bad sister, it doesn’t make you a bad wife or woman. Wanting your special day to be for the adults in your life is a good thing, and who knows, your siblings may be looking forward to a child-free day. If you really want to spend more time with the nieces and nephews, go for it, but wait until the wedding fogs have lifted and you’re more yourself again. And if you don’t, well, that’s fine too.
Count me in as another person who is very happily married to a lovely chap but dreams about exes and other men on a semi-regular basis. Sars’s response is spot on, and completely echoes my own view of relationships: that honesty is great, but kindess is sometimes even more important.
Dream, the fact that your happy with your boyfriend may be the reason you’re dreaming about your ex. Your subconscious may want your ex to make another choice, so that it doesn’t have to worry about the current, Good Boyfriend, making the choice that the ex did. Your subconscious may be trying to fix the past, so that the past doesn’t repeat in the present. It doesn’t have anything to do with reality, just hopes and fears sorting themselves out as you sleep. I’ll gladly swap you: I feel as if I’m constantly dreaming about my ex – we’ve been apart for years, and I get these wretched dreams, it feels as if I get them at least once a week, and maybe more. And in the dreams themselves, I’m unhappy being there with him – yet there we are, together. Throw in a bunch of very needy cats wanting attention, or needing medical attention, and you have a dreamscape that makes you long for something inappropriate instead. Or for someone to just hit you in the head with a hammer. [Yes, I did leave. No, we don’t speak. Yes, I do wish I had a chance to express to him all the things that made me unhappy in a way that he’d understand – just the way I tried when we were married. Yes, there were a lot of cats for whom I was [also] responsible. I don’t wonder what my dreams mean, I just Want Them To Stop.]
@Joe Mama: Hee! And also: is it possible that some friend recently responded to a comment to you with, “Oh, go [know thyself biblically]”, so then you dreamt of it?
I just wanted to say that sometimes dreams don’t mean a damn thing, but Joe Mama got there before me. That’s an awesome dream, Joe Mama.
I sometimes have confused dreams about my ex, too. It’s probably pretty common, really. How you want to interpret a dream is more telling than the dream itself, IMO.
NotZilla, I think Jen S’s advice is sensible, and Sarah’s, too. It’s easy to let feelings get compounded around weddings and other large, capital-letter life events. Not including the kids in the rehearsal certainly doesn’t make you a bad person. Think about your relationship with your nieces and nephews once you’re off the Wedding Bullet Train.
@La BellaDonna: I think we need to add “Oh, go [know thyself biblically]” to the Official TN Lexicon. That’s a keeper!
I’m the bridezilla; whoever pointed out that the stress of pre-wedding arrangements hieghtened everything, was spot on. My brother came to the rehearsal dinner and had a great time – it was almost entirely adults and ran late. The kids would have been cranky and tired and he would have needed to leave much earlier than he ultimately did. The wedding went off with only the major expected hitch and few minor ones – everyone who had a part seemed a little nervous about being in front of all those people (including me). I danced with and had a lot of photos with the kids at the wedding, whcih I think they enjoyed until about 90 minutes past their bed time, when they curled up at the table and started asking to go home. I got way too caught up in the pre-wedding craziness to appreciate how stressful it would have been for them to have 2 days in a row of all that! Thanks for the good advice!
Sorry, NotZilla; I meant to say you can think about your relationship with your nieces and nephews, if you want to, after jumping off the Wedding Train. Maybe you’re actually fine with how things are usually. Just cut yourself a break for now, is all I’m saying. And have fun at the wedding.
I had an extremely sexy dream about Ted Danson in which he tenderly bought me rubber rain boots while looking deep into my eyes and saying naughty things to me, in a tent in the pouring rain. I dreamed I tied my gay buddy to a chair in a public place & forced him to have sex with me while everyone watched. I dreamed of being in a play with Portia De Rossi & sneaking hot girl kisses backstage between acts…these are not adventures I have in daily life, I promise. Let’s HOPE dreams don’t necessarily mean anything.
Maybe JoeMama, LaBella & I need to stop eating pizza at bedtime or something…
I agree with Sars. I have a friend who says “Honesty without compassion is cruelty.” and I see that – don’t tell the boyfriend, it could create doubt where there is no need, and – he may want to tell you about HIS sex dreams, too! Don’t open THAT can o worms!
@ Dream – Sars is right. Your dreams about your ex aren’t necessarily about your ex. I only have an undergrad psych degree, but it’s enough to know that sometimes people or things we’ve thought of or seen lately appear in dreams as stand-ins for something else that your subconscious is trying to work out. I agree that this is probably less about wanting to be with your ex as it is about learning of his breakup bringing out subconscious hurt feelings that have yet to heal. I’ve been married for two years now and I’m totally in love with my husband, but from time to time I have similar dreams about the first guy I was in love with. I started having them after I became engaged, and they threw me for a loop at first, but I think now that it’s more about wanting this guy who rejected me to know that I’m worthy of love and to realize what a great thing he let get away. Since my husband’s the one who made me feel that way in the first place, I don’t need him to woo me in my dreams. I’ve got plenty of that in real life.
So try to relax, and not make too big a deal about this. Counseling or journaling is a good idea, anything to work out your feelings and help you understand what it’s really about–but NOT talking about it with your boyfriend. Even if he understands intellectually that it has nothing to do with your feelings for him, he’ll still be hurt, and that’s just not necessary.
@Anonymous with such good advice, do you have anything for me? I would love to blame pizza and fix it that easily, but it’s not the problem; dinner is a plain bagel, as often as not.
@Notzilla: So glad the wedding went off happily!
@Sandman: from me to you with undying inflection, I hereby gift the lexicon with “Oh, go [know thyself biblically]”. Also, here is [ ‘ ] an apostrophe, which I actually DO know how to use, missing from a “you’r[e]”. I hate it when they get away.
Also? For the wonderers? Honesty very, very seldom trumps kindness. If your marriage is going swimmingly, your spouse is happy – and you’re eaten up by an affair you had seven years before, when it wasn’t? Suck it up, and keep it to yourself. Offer it up for the poor souls in purgatory, deal with the results of actually having a conscience and not being a psychopath. Never lighten your own load with someone else’s misery. Apply as needed to non-affair situations.
@Margaret: Well, the latter two are at least a bit understandable. I’m not sure why rubber rain boots are sexy, unless it’s supposed to be a metaphor for other kinds of rubbers. Or maybe you just want a guy who’ll look after you.
I’m glad that people like Fat Clone Sex. It’s one of the few dreams I remember, because it was just so bizarre! (I don’t even remember whether the sex was any good.)
You guys ought to check out “Slow Wave”. It’s a webcomic where the guy writes comics based on people’s dreams.
Great. All this talk about sex dreams probably means that my next long-time standard dream about giant squid and/or giant paleozoic marine reptiles (as simultaneous subjects of fear and objects of a quest, sometimes in museums, often in small ponds, occasionally in stormy seas, and once in a very zoo-like bank lobby) will turn into one of those “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” – type things.
Sometimes I can “guide” my dreams (though never when I’m in the Model T trying to get to the natural history museum through the charity ball while wearing only a towel…), and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m partially conscious or if it’s just my overpowering superego. It’s a real bummer when I’m dreaming about cuddling with a crush and then, in the middle of it, turn around and tell him, “But seriously, I can’t see myself dating a married man. This just won’t work,” and then we have a sorrowful goodbye scene. Geesh.
So, yeah, don’t take everything in dreams at face value. Explore your conscious mind and feelings – anything in your subconscious had to travel through your conscious senses to get there.
@Dream: I’ve got to agree with Sars. There’s a fine line between complete honesty and hurtfulness in situations like this. You probably want to get to the bottom of the reasons why your subconscious is taking you there, but I don’t see the benefits outweighing the consequences of telling Mr. Current you’re dreaming about special naked time with Mr. Past.
@Ix: You’re correct — Armstrong did say “one small step for A man”, according to researchers who’ve analyzed the transmission recording. There was a story about it on NPR a couple of years back:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6183033
I LOVE it when Vine authors respond in the comments!
Thanks, NotZilla!!! :D
@Liz: Oh, the conversations you and I could have, complete with illustrated examples, but I doubt that Sars wants her comments to get that kinky!
@ Never: I agree with Sars and the others. You’ve just heard news about the ex, so those memories are fired off in your brain. I don’t think your dreams are smarter than your waking self about what’s best for you or what you want in a relationship. If you had watched a George Clooney movie and had a dream about him, you wouldn’t be feeling all guilty about it, so give your conscience a break.
These dreams will likely run their course, and the less you ruminate about their “true meaning” during your waking hours, the quicker you’ll be rid of them. If you want to be rid of them, of course… [hm.. George Clooney…]
A lot of people have noted that dreams aren’t literal in terms of the casting we do in our heads – I dream of my current love, but habitually populate him in the body of one of two particular exes even though my dreaming brain knows it’s him. I’ve largely figured out why this is, but am still frustrated at the rarity with which the man wears his own face in my dreams. It’s such a nice face, after all. My mind has a nasty tendency to tease me by the nonpresence of people I’d very much like to see in there (my late father) or the wrong-facing of people who do consent to appear in my wanderings. Stupid mind.
It also occasionally sets me up for sex dreams starring Robynne from the first cycle of ANTM (that was a hilarious one), Emilio Estevez (still haven’t lived that down with one of my best friends), my father (not since he died, and no there was never any sort of abuse or even significant trouble in the relationship there) and really gross imaginary men who seem to represent some sort of smart-assed idea about “dirty” sex. The tricky bit is that, while in dreams not all the people we see are “really” (hah) the people we’re supposedly seeing – neither is sex even always even sex in a dream.
Sometimes the cigar is a cigar.
Sometimes it’s an antelope.
(… I’m in the Model T trying to get to the natural history museum through the charity ball while wearing only a towel…)
@Liz in Minneapolis: This is the part where you tell us you’re gonna lay off the garlic & squid ink ice cream before bed, right?
@La BellaDonna: hee!
Sic[k], I hate misuses of [sic] of the kind you mention. Trust Sars here, as ever. I’m on a minor kind of mission, in fact, against this kind of misuse. Seeing it as a signal of editorial disapproval makes me crazy. [Sic] is not [ew!].
Since everyone seems to like hearing from the people in the letters, I figured I would say hi and let you all know how my ex-y dreams worked out.
I wrote to Sars almost four weeks ago, and writing the question seemed to be quite cathartic because shortly after the dreams totally stopped. As for why they appeared in the first place, I think the finding out suddenly that the ex was single again just shook my equilibrium because we only dated for a short time, and he broke it off suddenly while I thought things were going great. The situation always felt a bit unfinished, as he really never explained what happened, but while there was someone else in the picture it somehow made sense. The sheer possibility that he made a mistake dredged all the feelings back up in unpredictable ways that I guess I was only willing to think about during my REM cycle.
But, sometimes the decisions not made by you turn out to be the best ones, and I’ve returned to thinking my ex is kind of a dink. I never told the boyfriend anything (although he was getting worried that something was the matter because I was being weird) and things are back to normal. I’m a lucky girl and super glad I didn’t manage to eff things up.
Now my dreams involve ordinary things like showing up to an exam having never attended the class…and I’m naked. And can I just say how totally surreal and awesome it is to have people I have never met commenting on my subconscious? Seriously, cool. Gotta love TN.
Thanks to Sandman (thanks, Sandman!) I suddenly realized what those sprinklings (and sometimes heavy pepperings) of “[sic]” signify, particularly when they shouldn’t be used as they are.
They’re editorial [sic]cups.
@Dream–I used to let it get to me when I was in a relationship and having dreams/fantasies/what-have-you about other people, to the point where I figured that if I could think that way at all about anyone other than the dude I was with, I wasn’t meant to be with him, and so I would dump him. (Which actually seems to have been a good move in those cases, because those dudes were losers.) Maybe that worry is just a phase some (all?) of us have to go through. Since I’ve been with my husband, I still get crushes on other people, have fun dreams about them, sometimes about my exes (although that pretty much just makes me feel icky when I wake up, because again–losers), and sometimes I want to crawl back into those dreams, but the difference is that now I recognize that it doesn’t have anything to do with my commitment to my husband. I think it’s just the way the human brain works. For a little while when you’re first with someone, that person is all you can think about, but it doesn’t stay that way forever. Unless you’re actually feeling the urge to cheat or something, I don’t think it’s a problem.
It sounds to me like maybe you didn’t get the kind of closure you wanted from the relationship with Ex, and when you heard he was single again, your brain went, hey, that makes him fair game! Which, you know, it does, but it doesn’t make you fair game for him, and as long as you recognize and are happy with that when you’re actually awake, I wouldn’t worry about it. Do whatever you feel is necessary to work through it in your own head, but if you’re like me and you sometimes need someone else to tell you something’s not as big a deal as you might be making it, I’m willing to be that person.
And for what it’s worth, the only times I have ever dreamed about someone I was actually in a relationship with at the time, it’s been about some unrelated thing and that person just happened to be there, or it’s been a nightmare about something bad happening to/with them.
@Dream- Just to chime in, I’ve been engaged for a year, and couldn’t imagine loving anyone more or being more confortable with anyone but my fiance. However. I still go through phases every once in a while where I have elaborate what-if fantasies about the almost-but-never-quite-got-off-the-ground relationships. Like a friend I hooked up with years ago, but didn’t want to date at the time. Or the one i liked but didn’t want to get into a long distance thing with. But what they really end up doing is generally making me realize that, while I can imagine it all… It didn’t happen. And my fantasy of it feels more like a movie than a memory. I don’t know if it says something about your feelings for the ex that you *are* thinking about him, but if it doesn’t feel real, it probably is just a dream- albeit with characters from real life.
And then Dreamy responded, too! This is a great Vine week! :D
@ Joe Mama: I’m late, but I second the applause for your comment. Oh, thank you.
Yay, Dreamy! I’m glad things worked out!
Joe Mama, no such luck. Just boring relationship angst dreams last night involving me trying to steal a guy from my best friend – a guy she never dated, but with whom I had a virginal fling. 20 years ago. Sorry! Actually, the giant squid/sea monster dreams (which have NEVER been sexual, BTW, at least overtly – symbolically, good Lord, I hope not) make a lot of sense for me, given that I’ve been a marine biology/natural history geek all my life and think marine megafauna are really cool, but was also slightly traumatized by a certain scene in the “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” ride when I was 4. And then “Jaws” at 7…
More disturbing? When I dream that my cats have gotten loose and then I find them, but it turns out they’re not the right cats after all. AAAAAA!
@Liz in Minn: Omg, me too. “I found you! You’re not my cat! Where is my cat! Is that my cat?” And then I wake up and grab them kiss their poor little heads until they squirm free and give me wonky looks like I’m nuts. Which: noted.
I don’t know if anyone ever reads the comments years later, but just in case, I thought I would let y’all know that on rare occasions I still dream about Mr. Ex, but I’m marrying Mr. Current in 78 days. All’s well that ends well!
Dreamy again.
Not sure why this Vine letter popped into my head, but…
So I married Mr. Current, and on my wedding day heard from Mr. Ex wishing me well and almost burst into tears from sadness that I wasn’t marrying him. So maybe Mr. Current wasn’t right after all, evidenced by the fact we divorced less than two years later. I then had a passionate dramatic long-distance romance with Mr. Ex, which ended with me completely broken in a very Natalie Inbruglia lying naked on the floor kind of way. Eight years later and friends with both but single AF. Probably for the best. :-D