Dream: In Another Woman’s Body/Life

I am in a house that is not familiar. There’s a man in the house that I sense is my husband, but he doesn’t look familiar. He’s kind of nerdy looking, and I know the man I’m in a relationship with does not look nerdy. I get the sense that I have entered someone else’s body. This woman (the nerdy man’s wife) has straight blond hair. She is medium build. I must have seen pictures of the two of them together, but I also get a sense of her personality. She is a partier. She likes to drink a lot and carry on loudly with friends. Not like me at all. The man is balding with a slight pot belly. He’s not very tall – I’m guessing shorter than me, but I can’t be sure because I’m sitting. He is wearing drooping, khaki slacks and a yellow plaid short sleeved button down shirt over a white t-shirt.

I am sure the man doesn’t know what is happening, so I feel I should play along until I figure things out. I am sitting in a chair in the kitchen of the home; he has just entered a door from outside and is standing now just inside the door and a few feet away from me. There is at least one other person in the room with us and there is a conversation going on. I’m just sitting – not speaking – and observing him. I try to imagine if I could ever have an emotional bond with him; ever find him attractive. I don’t think so, but again, feel I should play along. We make eye contact, and he moves toward me. It seems like he has just come home and I’m wondering how he customarily greets his wife whose body I am inhabiting, so I hold my hand out toward him as he walks by my chair and he reaches out with his hand, giving mine a squeeze as he continues by. I get a warm feeling from the gesture, as his grip lingers for a second, and then he continues on his way, presumably to do whatever he does when he first arrives home at the end of each day.

Now I’m up and moving toward him in a room that feels like a living room. He says something to me and I respond. I don’t know what was said, but the end result is that I must go to the master bedroom to get something. I walk into another room at the back of the house only to discover it is not the master bedroom as I had expected. It is a mostly empty room with a workout bench on one side. I think to myself that I must recover quickly from this mistake before he notices. I come out of the room and my path back toward the living room brings to my attention a stairway that I must have walked past on my way by, but did not notice before. I think to myself that our bedroom must be upstairs, so I head up. He asks why I was in the other room and I tell him I thought I had left something in there. I head up the stairs to find the master bedroom.

In the next scene, I am on the phone with someone who I apparently know in my “real” life. I’m telling her about my dilemma – being in someone else’s body and not knowing why, wondering if I’ll make it back to my body or if I should work toward figuring out how to “be” this new person. I presume the woman whose body I’m inhabiting is now inhabiting mine. I assume everyone in this new life is seeing me as her (her body) even though I see me as myself. I hang up.

Next scene, I’ve shared my story with the man and he is understanding. He says he knew something was different about me by the way I had been acting / reacting to things. It feels like he is going to be supportive of me no matter what. Interesting observation that I didn’t get a sense that he was feeling a loss over his wife being displaced from her body. Instead, he was just as calm as could be and supportive of whatever I felt I needed to do.

When I awoke from the dream I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to see where this adventure was going. I thought maybe it could be a good premise for a fiction book. It’s been done before, but not exactly like this.

THOUGHTS:
My thoughts as I write this are that I am working toward major changes in my life around work, friends, family and romantic relationships. All of that would feel very much like stepping into someone else’s life. While the feeling in my dream was that I was taking a step back socially and economically (older home, geeky looking husband), it felt like something I could manage and would probably be very happy with. I got a sense of much love coming from the man, before and after I shared with him my story. It was a very comforting feeling being in the dream – after the initial confusion.

The idea that I would inhabit a partier’s body may represent a change I feel I need to make. While I’m not a big partier, I do drink more than I should at times. While I was in the strange woman’s body I felt calm and it seemed like a big contrast when put against the impression I had of her.