Life's Little Mysteries #1: Divorce and Dreams

Those of you that know me know that I used to be married, and also know what the circumstances were surrounding my divorce. As sure as I'm sitting here typing this out, I tell you without reservation, and with all my heart...I have absolutely no desire to be with my ex-wife, and still hate what she did to our marriage, to me, and most of all to my mother. If she were, for some reason, to come back around and indicate she might want to talk things out toward an end of possibly getting back together, I would most likely laugh in her face and show her the door without further discussion.

Having said that...why in the bloody hell do I keep dreaming about her?

Now, before you jump to any conclusions, let me set the record straight. I can tell you that these dreams are not derived from any kind of conscious longing for her on my part. In fact, I rarely think about her in any kind of "together" capacity during my waking hours, nor as I'm about to go to sleep. She couldn't be any further from my mind. I've not had any contact with her in nearly ten years. Yet, somehow, she manages to work herself into my occasional dream.

(Side note: In going back over what I've written so far and trying to keep a thought flow going, I noticed I inadvertantly left the word "not" out of the sentence "these dreams are not derived". Subconscious? Is my Freudian slip showing? Interesting. Anyway, back to the flow...)

I admit that some of these dreams are sexual. We were married, and we obviously did have a sex life. But she fooled around on me, several times. This was the main reason for our divorce, as most of you know. I also submit that the concept of one's significant other being "serviced" by someone else is known to be a turn-on for lots of people. Not everyone, but some. However, these dreams have nothing to do with other people, and never take place in the past during the time of our marriage. In fact, none of the dreams take place in any of the places we used to live or go. I actually don't know where any of these dreams take place. They simply take place in the present time, because I realize in the dream that we had been together before, we had been apart, and we're back together. There's no real joy or happiness on my part while I'm in the dream with her...it's just that I'm with her. Like I said, sometimes the dreams are sexual, but sometimes they're just everyday kinds of things happening, like we're talking or something. I couldn't even remember anything we've talked about in any of the dreams, or anything we've done. Even the sexual ones weren't anything spectacular that I would trouble myself to commit to memory. It's almost like these dreams are some kind of parallel universe that I go back and forth between, and when I show up there, I readily accept what's going on as normal and natural. Not happily accept, just readily. I say readily because I don't recall any arguing or debate about what's going on, like I don't want to be there, or having any kind of hard feelings about what happened before. I'm just there, and what's happening is happening. Kind of like when Picard first encounters Kirk in the Nexus, in the movie Star Trek: Generations. Kirk isn't supposed to be there, but it's presenting him with things that were familiar to him, and he accepts it as normal and goes about living his "life", even though none of it is real. Anyway, enough about that. I think I've gotten the point across about the dreams.

This woman is so far from my waking thoughts in the sense of any kind of reconciling or any possibility of being a couple again...ever. It's not anything I ever consider. I don't sit around and ponder "gosh, I wonder what it would be like if we got back together?" I don't want that, and I don't want her. We actually should have never gotten married in the first place, but we tried it, and it didn't work. I realize all that, and I have more than moved on. I don't know what's more disturbing: the fact that I have dreams about us being together, or that I can't seem to dream about significant others before her and since then that I actually do care about.

So...am I screwed up or what? Do I possess a secret, subconscious desire to specifically be with her again, or am I just lonely enough to want to be with somebody, that my mind sticks me with someone I was with for the longest amount of time? Do the dreams derive from wanting what could be, or merely from memories of routine familiarity?

Hopefully the latter, in both cases.

(Another side note: When I started typing out that last sentence, I almost typed the word "happily" instead of "hopefully", so if I was getting ready to say "happily the latter", then "hopefully" that's a good sign. ;-))