On Love

The Dream: I am walking with my friend/lover/soul mate. We stop to sit on the curb by the side of the road. I say, “It's hard to be in a sexual relationship with a good friend.” I think about this for a while. “I'm so afraid!”

I feel the fear. I wonder about the alternative: anonymous sex? He says, “I know.” He lifts me from the curb and enfolds me, gently and lovingly, in his arms.

Interpretation: The sexual relationship represents the vulnerability of giving myself, of being open. This leads to inevitable pain. Right before having the dream I had visited a very ill relative, and I was forcefully reminded of the separation that mortality entails. I saw the relative's spouse in unspeakable pain at her husband's inevitable succumbing to death, as we all must. Strong attachments, as the Buddhists say, are one source of pain in the world. But I don't agree that the solution is not to have them, that seems not only cowardly, but life-denying.

In this dream the stronger part of myself, the male friend/lover, knows what the curbed part doesn't. He lifts her to her feet, and they embrace: a symbolic acceptance of love with both its joys and sorrows. Love is shown to be a totality of communication and involvement, made up of both the spiritual (friendship) and the physical (sex), important here as the grounded, if mortal, part of us.