Were your mom and your ex-wives -- especially your second wife -- a lot alike? You may have been psychologically choosing to marry women who were like your mother to deal with issues you had with your mother. Interesting that your nightmares ended after the second wife. Aren't you in a good marriage now? Or were there others?
My first wife and my mom hated each other. Lady I'm married to now (yes, a good marriage) got along with my mom when mom was behaving herself (between drug overdoses and psychotic episodes), but she chewed her out big time on the phone one time when she started wrongly accusing me.
My second wife, who was one of the most beautiful women I've ever known, looked nothing like my mom (none of my wives or girlfriends did, although early photos of my mom are pretty foxy) and when I first knew her was much more cheerful and good natured than my mom. But somewhere toward the end of our marriage--kinda the beginning of the end--I was in an argument with my mom because she was driving everyone nuts on what was supposed to be a vacation and my wife jumped in my mom's side; and suddenly I realized how very alike the two of them were in many ways. Like I said, beginning of the end. I didn't even like my mother and now I suddenly discovered I had married her!!! So yeah, that's probably why they always get on my case when they show up in my dreams.
On some level, you must have had better relationships with the old girlfriends than your ex-wives.
Oh, definitely. Nearly every girl I dated and then we drifted apart, we usually came back together sometime later for another fling or at least remained friends. Not my ex-wives!!! With them the parting words were "eat worms and die!" You couldn't have tied me up and thrown me back on either of them.
I think it was my second wife who once told me I was a great date but a lousy husband, and I think that was fairly close to the truth. In my current marriage, I once ran off for a week with an old girlfriend who had come back into my life, but realized in time that the lightening I was trying to bottle in that relationship had already fizzled. Called up my wife and said "Please let me come home." She did and we went to a counseler--my suggestion--and in the process it suddenly dawned on me I have had the wrong idea about marriage most of my life. (It's like one of my favorite cousins told me when we were just teens, I wasn't in love, I was in love with the idea of being in love.) I was hung up on infatuation of those early days when its all wine and roses and you just can't wait to see your significant other again. Of course, you can't sustain that high forever, and when it seemed the flame started dying down and the heat dissipated, I thought, "well it's all over" and I'd drift on.
Infatuation is easy, all fun and games, love means responsibility and commitment, and marriage is a lot of hard work and sacrifice, but still worth it if you're working at it together.
Those sound like good dreams, though. Healthy dreams. It sounds like your mind is just keeping you functioning as a responsible adult. You're no longer the younger man who wishes he was back in the comforts of your old childhood home. Dreaming of being back in the Army, with paperwork to do, is keeping you young at heart and responsible at the same time. I would embrace those dreams -- they're better for you than mom and your ex-wives.
Yeah, it's been a while since I last had a back in the Army dream, but I know it will pop up again. Dreaming of home while in the Army and going back into the Army when I home were some of the most realistic dreams I've ever had. There's only one recurring dream that was more lifelike and even worse. When I was in my early teens I had a motorcycle that I loved showing off on and playing
The Wild One, and one night I almost got broadsided by a speeding Cadillac that I never saw coming. I was making a U-turn on a highway just outside of town and suddently this car, which apparently was starting to pass me runs over in the far bar ditch to keep from running smack over me as I apparently turned in front of him. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to brake--and then suddenly everything slowed down to like stop-frame motion where I could see the Caddy's rear tire and fender move up an inch and the front wheel of my bike got an inch closer--it was like click, click, click, closer and closer and I could see as plain as day the corner of the Caddy's rear bumper was going to catch that front wheel and flip me rolling over the pavement, dirt, and debris. I knew sure as god made little green apples I was about to die.
And then suddenly the Caddy whipped by, my front wheel passed just about an inch behind the bumper and I completed my turn. Scared hell out me at the moment but by the time I got home, I'd pretty well shook it off, and the next morning I was up and on my cycle again. In time I forgot about it. Then suddenly some years ago (during my second marriage) it came back to me in a dream and I was there again watching the wheel and bumper coming together, click, click, click. I'd wake up pouring sweat, my heart beating like an anvil, and gasping like I had run a marathon. That dream would come back on occasion, always the same, and I'd see it just as plain as the night it happened. Again I haven't had it for years since my second divorce. But at the time it was the most real, most frightening dream I've ever had.