I had a dream that greatly effected my world for a little while.

At the time, my husband was working swing shift, and I was working day. We never saw each other, and I was getting very lonely. Anyway, I started to get a crush on a guy at work. One night I had a dream that he (my co-worker) was over at my house, but it was my Grandmother’s house (she raised me). We (co-worker and myself) were down in the basement where my old room used to be. We were talking and kissing.

In my dream, I told him that I loved him. He just shook his head “no” and kissed me more. I remember him telling me that he loved me, but that he loved his fiancee more. I told him that I understood.

Then I heard my husband. He was upstairs in my Grandmother’s kitchen, talking to a man I had never met. He was very drunk and yelling about how I had better not be cheating on him because I was his wife.

I went upstairs, told my husband to shut up and go home. I then walked my co-worker out the door, downstairs. I told him that I would see him tommorrow. As I was outside, I looked up and I could see my husband in the window, crying. I felt such sadness for him.

When I woke up, this dream effected me so much that I pressured my husband into finding another job—on the day shift. He has, and I have never had another dream like that again. I often wonder what this dream meant. And why it effected me so much.

—Anonymous, Age 21, Female, Married, Spokane, WA, USA

Hi Anonymous—

You may not have understood this dream from an intellectual perspective, but your actions show that you clearly understood its emotional message.

During a difficult period in your marriage, your wandering attention threatened to bring you and your husband a great deal of pain. Your dream showed that an affair with a co-worker, tempting though it was, might permanently injure your relationship at home. Based upon this balanced display of temptation and cost, you chose to find a much more constructive, and ultimately simpler, solution to your problem. You encouraged your honey to get on the day shift!

Your report is a compelling illustration of how dreams often are able to assist us in our everyday decision making. Would an affair just for sex (your co-worker tells you he loves his fiancee more) be worth the damage it would cause to your marriage? To help you answer this question, the dream allows you to see the situation from your husband’s perspective—the view from the window. In a heartbeat, you know the answer. From the day you woke up from this dream, I doubt you have ever viewed an extra-marital affair in the same light. Your dream showed you something that we all intuitively know about affairs—but that occasionally it helps to be reminded of. Affairs are selfish—and they do hurt relationships.

Congratulations on having the courage to learn from your inner voice. The ability of dreams to help us to see—and correct—self-destructive behaviors is one of their greatest gifts.