A couple divorced after an 8-year marriage. For the next 23 years, the woman had a recurring dream. They are reunited. The dream is very sexual, very "real" and it occurs regularly.
Over these years she has remarried, was widowed, and had other romances, but the dream persists, regardless of her relationship status.
In the effort to interpret dreams one learns not to take the imagery as is, but only through the filter of the person's own associations. However this dream is well-known. The dreamer is just like millions of women who repeatedly dream this same startling Dream Lover theme. There is much striking universality about it.
The ex-husband has nothing to do with the source of this dream. The dream's unraveling is related to the image she has of the Ideal Man; moreover, she cannot even choose which image is for her because this is determined at an unconscious level. I would only say that her first marriage reflected an image recognized early as "heavenly," and that it remains positively the image of the Inner Man, her Animus.
This figure, The Animus, wears her former husband's face, and touches her with his hand, and throughout this whole time it is he who has claimed himself her true husband, though she has married nortals twice again. This is not about going back into the original relationship, but finding within her heart the actual man who is the one "above" everyone else, whose pleasure and whose connection represents the most connection she has ever experienced. Tragically, this is not to the former husband, but to the inner figure.
The dream persists because she is in love with the Ghost, not any real man, but the Shadow Figure which surrounds her. She must make contact with this Ghost. He may speak to her when she is trying to make a decision, or prevent her from dating a perfectly terrific potential. Why? Because he needs to hold her in an illegal claim on her heart. However, if she can locate him, catch him in his act, he will become the lady's most helpful ally. It's all in how much she admits to herself about her own "truth."
Furthermore, what the highly erotic sense of the dream suggests also, is that the Dream Lover needs to emphasize his point, adding drama and energy, "POOF" and magic to his argument that HE is the man for her, and so sends the dream of the unbelievable orgasm unattainable (he says!!) except through him. Which, if she follows, makes herself perfectly lonely for the man she cannot have. But the Animus is quite happy in this! Her misery (lonliness) is his pleasure, so to speak.
There are worse scenarios. She may also be being duped, if that is what her first husband did, whatever crime he committed against her before, is now being committed again. Is she dating anyone? This is about her life being stolen. She should be in bed with a real human being, not this creep.
I don't take a woman's erotic dream to mean anything but trouble. It certainly is not a harbinger of things going well. This woman should try to identify these three-month periods because obviously it means something. She must be ruthless with herself, no holding back, just delving herself.
When you have this dream, take heed: Don't be seduced!
What was sensible and understood about love in the ancient world is lost on the modern world. Feminine responses (no matter what sex or gender we are) have faded into the past. Being fashionable has resulted in loneliness. Our Quest for Love returns us to the possibility of loving like a human, not like an angel or creation of perfection from Mount Olympus which has no feeling. By returning ourselves to a conscious, mortal status we are more receptive to the truth of Love, and can bind ourselves more naturally and with greater richness in our experiences.
As Mortals, we are forbidden to do as the gods, yet because our unconscious is Mount Olympus (poetically speaking, of course) we find ourselves in its merry-go-round. To copy the gods would be "hubris," and warrants their punishment.
It is by compulsion and reaction that find ourselves ensnared by the Fates. Yet, the old mythologies contain "recipes" for us mortals, procedures and advice which returns us our mortal status to save the day.
Our instinctual reactions are described by the planetary archetypes in the astrological chart, and pictured in dreams. Almost all imagery can be visualized and understood by the same basic symbolic language.
