She Broke Up With Me

Last night, my wife listed all the ways she felt that she could not connect with me - how I was selfish, sexually, only reaching out to her to satisfy my needs and not being aware of hers; how I shut her down regularly about her ideas, needs, and ambitions; how I dominated conversations and failed to remember things she said; how I failed to follow through on many, many promises; how I leaned on her and depended on her and yet demanded more. Because of these behaviors, she said she wasn't leaving me, but she definitely needed time away.

Of course I was shocked on many levels. Why hadn't she told me about this? How could I have allowed myself to be so terrible? Why had she put up with it all and why was she done now?? What would I do now? What about the kids - were they getting in the line of fire of this schism?

In essence she wasn't choosing to leave me because of the kids, but given the fact that I wasn't meaningfully contributing to her on any serious level, she didn't need me around. Going away would help her to decide what to do, and what to do with me.

I was crushed and hurt and mostly, so embarrassed and sorry. Every word, every perception she shared was 100 percent accurate - and, while I may have had my reasons for behaving the way I have, those reasons simply weren't strong enough to explain why I basically destroyed my marriage and as a result, very likely crippled my family.


Now here's the good news: this all happened in a dream.

I awoke very troubled, of course. The dream was very vivid and my immediate impulse was to ask for reassurance from her - that she wasn't going to leave me. But then I thought better of that - it was 5 am and there were just too many lessons in the dream to try to brush it aside as pure subconscious randomness. The dream was a gift - literally and figuratively a wake-up call about how I operate and how I conduct myself in relationships.

I lied in bed thinking about that and have the beginnings of a new vision about relationships....