The BetsyG-Spot

This is a bit of an odd one. I decided to start with the dream and see where it led me. And that’s why it’s a little late; it took a bit to get it under some control.

By BetsyG

I had a dream last night that shook me up a little. I was showing someone a video I’d supposedly put on Youtube of me dancing with Mike, the guy who broke up with me last year to go back to his ex-wife. We made quite a graceful pair. At the end of the dance, we kissed, a real Hollywood kiss (probably the effect of having watched the last five minutes of the truly horrible Failure to Launch just before I fell asleep, which was the equivalent of eating a pepperoni pizza). As I watched the video in the dream, I felt something I haven’t dared to feel in real life.

Rewind a bit. When Mike broke up with me, I was a wreck. Granted, other things were going on at that time that had weakened me, but it was Mike breaking up with me that pushed me over the edge. I started on medication almost immediately after, which kicked in within a few weeks and blunted my feelings for him. As the year wore on, as anyone who’s been reading The BetsyG-Spot knows, I came to think of him only as a liar and an alcoholic.

But I’ll tell you outright: that’s a revisionist’s history. It’s a lot less painful to think of him as a bit of a loser than to confront what the dream was telling me: I was in love with him, and I miss what we had, even if I don’t miss him.

I saw him for just a couple of months, and his drinking had already become a problem for me, enough that I laid it out for him that that kind of drinking wasn’t going to work for me. I had some experience with this. My boyfriend in college was an alcoholic. It took me over a year to figure that out, but there was a moment of clarity when I saw that he was drinking in a way that was different from how I was drinking, and that difference didn’t feel good.

It wasn’t the most obvious thing—how can you pick out an alcoholic in college—but I guess I know problem drinking when I see it. It’s when they’re drinking when you’re not, when their drinking outpaces yours, when they involve alcohol in occasions that don’t call for it. It didn’t take many such incidents to feel very deeply that I was right.

There are other occasions I experience this type of clarity, such as when I’ve done setups. When my friend Kim told me she was getting divorced, the first thing I said was, “Let me know when you’re ready to date. I have a guy for you.” Even while she was married, I knew that she and my friend Steve would get along perfectly. When that instinct kicks in, there’s a certainty that can’t be argued with. (Of course, they did go out, got married, stayed married, and have been living happily ever after. What the hell kind of story would that be if they didn’t?)

And so it was with my college boyfriend and alcoholism, when I turned out to be more correct than I had imagined; last I heard, he was riding a bicycle to work, having lost his license after several drunk driving incidents (and likely jail time). But am I as certain that Mike was an alcoholic? He didn’t think he was, and I was willing to give him the opportunity to prove that. But that same instinct that made me so sure Kim and Steve would get along told me that proof was not likely to come.

So the Mike thing might not have worked out even if he hadn’t gone back to his ex. But the fact is—what I could see in the dream—I loved being with him.

I just did another setup—or at least was peripherally involved in getting two people together—and it again came from that feeling of knowing that these people were right for each other. I could see before they were even officially dating that there was a comfort level and ease between them that would draw them together and bring them a type of satisfaction they’d probably never experienced.

That’s the type of comfort I felt with Mike, that feeling of, ahhhhhh, I’m home; I understand, and I’m understood. Given where I am these days, I avoid thinking about that feeling. But I can’t ignore what my dream was clearly telling me: not so deep down, I still want that.