Thread: Rejecting best friend and adopting two babies

Although in order to provide a more accurate interpretation it would usually be best to have some additional general background information about you, a few ideas can be tried out to see if they might fit your own situation in some way. However, it’s important to say that dreams can be very difficult to interpret correctly, especially when just being looked at in a web page type of environment.

But I would say in general terms, it looks like your dream is trying to focus on the actual current relationship with your guy friend.

To complicate things, it’s probably also bringing up the subject of your “inner man” (just like there is an “inner woman” in men).

This is a concept of the famous psychiatrist Carl Jung which has stood up very well to the investigations and experiences of professionally trained analysts over many decades.

It might be a good idea at first to give you an idea about this inner psychological figure in a woman.

So here is a definition of the term “animus” (the inner man in a woman) as found in analyst Jane Wheelwright’s book “Death of a Woman”. Although being a definition, it tends to be a little dry, by thinking over each part and relating it to your personal experience, the nature of this inner figure should gradually make more sense over time:

“Animus: The archetype in the female psyche that is the inherited pattern of potential experience of the male instinct.

This archetype underlies and is basic to a complex which is affected by the individual’s early experiences of men, primarily her father, male siblings, and the collective images of men provided by her cultural experience.

The images and affects [emotions] that attach to the complex express what is other than her female body-ego identity, such as her own unconscious maleness, the unconscious, the inferior function [for example, if a woman tends to move through life chiefly using emotions and evaluations, then her inferior function would tend to relate to the use of thinking and the intellect].

The animus assumes a generalized image of the individual’s male ideal, which strongly influences her selection of a mate.

Consciously related to, the animus – presented in dreams as a single figure or a group – functions as inspirator or bridge to the unconscious as source of creative, mental, or spiritual initiative and well-spring of potentiality for development. The animus functions as guide to and expedites the pursuit of impersonal endeavours.

When not consciously related to, the animus causes a woman to be opinionated, argumentative, rigid, controlling, and excessively critical of herself or others”

So as mentioned, it looks like your dream is about both the outer guy and your inner man at this important time of your life.

It starts off by probably showing symbolically how it sees your current overall situation.

For example, you’re currently in a very important time of transition where you’re studying for a career while at the same time going more deeply into personal relationships.

It could be that, from the dream’s point of view, you might be trying to do too much all at once.

For instance, it shows you as being very poor but you have adopted a baby and a toddler.

A simple but effective way to understand a dream is to take an image like that and to imagine what it would mean if you actually did that in outer life.

In this case, I think you’d agree that doing so would be a disaster, causing practical hardships in moving ahead in life similar to what your old school friend is probably going through.

On the whole, the dream creates an overall scene of chaos with you and your annoying friend living in your mother’s empty and poorly arranged office with a toddler running around and a crying baby lying in only a doll’s bed.

A toddler in dreams often symbolizes a strong sense of enterprise and curiosity, probably a lot like you’re experiencing in school with many new experiences needing to be explored and understood. It’s possible that keeping up with things could often be hard to do.

A baby girl in the dreams of a woman usually represents her growing potential self, a kind of image of her overall individuality that has to be “nurtured” and “taken care of” in spite of all of the difficulties involved with this.

So the discouraging nature of this scene could be important to see as a contrast with your pleasant memories of studying with your guy friend in the same office.

For example, the stress of dealing with your studies and other matters, along with some difficult personal issues could understandably be making you unconsciously wish for the state of “being taken care of” instead of facing various challenges in a more determined and individual way.

This idea is partly based on how you phone your guy friend in the dream to have him come and take you away.

The dream then shows you as easily giving in to his “blackmail” by agreeing to be his girlfriend, perhaps a way of showing that you could sink into a kind of delusion about the relationship very quickly.

In the second part of the dream, the idea continues that things aren’t that great.

For instance, the guy’s car is old in contrast to outer reality. This type of thing is often a dream’s way of trying to lower the dreamer’s opinion of a person or situation etc.

In a similar way, the house is quite old and the dining room is very small.

The idea might partly be that if you were kind of “absorbed” by your guy friend’s mentality and attitudes etc. (i.e. as represented by the house where he lives), this wouldn’t be good for you because little “nourishment” would come of it to develop your own unique personality (i.e. there is only a very small dining room).

Similarly, the toddler who probably represents something like your own eager curiosity and élan vital would tend to “disappear” by you maybe preferring instead to be “taken care of” without having to think about things very much.

The baby is now asleep, perhaps adding to the idea that your own self-development would tend to be “asleep” too much and not growing enough by, for example, facing new challenges head on.

It’s possible that the idea of being “impulsive” and “unprepared” (which appeared earlier in the image that your adopted baby daughter has only a doll’s bed to sleep in) might be added to by the fact that your guy friend is quite prepared to take on the responsibility of taking care of you and your two adopted children without much thought and apparently without having a job.

The toddler and the baby girl have been closely connected by the dream to the idea of your “identity” which must be cared for, but no name is even considered for the toddler and a roadblock appears in trying to name your daughter.

Your guy friend in the dream can’t remember the name of his mother. Again, thinking what this would mean if it happened in real life shows how serious a problem this “forgetting” points to, either with the real guy friend or with your “inner man” in some way.

You forgetting her name in the dream has a more reasonable explanation because it might be hinting that you could be tending to understandably hide from yourself how hurt you feel that the real mother doesn’t like you too much.

In the overall context of the dream, again the feeling of being incredibly attracted to him might be related to a very strong wish to be “taken care of” and to not have to work at yourself very much.

If so, the dream doesn’t seem to like this attitude very much because it shows you as impulsively going to marry the guy friend in three weeks for the only reason that you “really feel attracted to him” as opposed to sorting out if he is responsible enough to take care of you and the children etc.

In acting this way, the dream might also being saying that you could become too separated from your deep instinctive feminine side as symbolized by your mother and related images.

For example, in the first part of the dream, your mother’s office is empty and in a mess. Also, you only have a doll’s bed for your baby. In addition, while mothers don’t have to be martyrs, there will be times when an actual mother will have to admit her irritated feelings and carry on regardless, unlike your actions in the dream of possibly wanting to run away from dealing at this time with the nurturing of inner qualities which isn’t always very easy to do.

Later, as mentioned, a key scene occurs where your guy friend and yourself aren’t able to remember his mother’s name, perhaps showing that a disconnect from whatever deep instinctive side “mother” symbolizes could develop too much over time.

Climbing stairs in dreams usually symbolizes the gradual moving up step-by-step to higher levels of understanding and development by experiencing and absorbing ongoing experiences.

Once more, something isn’t right in the guy friend’s house because the stairs are endless, maybe symbolizing that something would be fundamentally wrong in an outer relationship which would “lead nowhere” in the sense of fulfilling yourself as well as possible (i.e. your little baby girl could never end up sleeping in her own bed to be physically refreshed and to dream her own dreams).

Your description of what recently happened between you and your guy friend seems to partially support this particular way of looking at your dream.

For example, you apparently want to try new relationships with a variety of people at this time of your life when this is natural and much easier to do than later. This could possibly be the toddler in you who wants to explore and try new things although falls and scraped knees will happen.

It looks like a part of your positive feminine side wants to avoid hurting your guy friend too much by distancing the relationship now before it becomes too close.

But another good part of your feminine side doesn’t want to upset a good feeling atmosphere between yourself and another person.

So this painful conflict could be part of what the dream is showing in the chaotic first part where you could be “taking on too much” in trying to follow your natural needs to meet new people and have a variety of experiences while not “hurting” anyone.

As a general impression, it looks like your guy friend in real life could also be trying to “blackmail” you and to play on your feelings by telling you he’s falling for someone else but all the same, kind of petulantly wanting to keep you around in case it doesn’t work out.

This is of course very painful for you and your basic feminine being as a person, and so perhaps the dream is showing that it’s probably best to choose for your own good.

Anyway as mentioned, without knowing anything much about you, this way of looking at your dream might not fit your personal circumstances very well, but I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way.

Please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this particular way of looking at your dream.