In the first dream, he had suffered some sort of medical condition after our divorce and as part of the treatment for that condition, his face had been reconstructed such that he wasn't even recognizable. I was seeing him for the first since that. The stark difference to the face I thought I had remembered so well was very jarring.
I still struggle with reconciling the man I thought he was with the man he showed me to be in the end and I wonder if this was my mind's way of trying to still process that. Although I now understand that it's not that he went through a reconstruction (I really think he changed and grew very little over the two decades I knew him), but more that my perspective went through a reconstruction combined with the fact that as he had nothing to lose anymore at the end, he dropped more of his masks.
I still ask myself how he could do what he did to someone he claimed to love. It's hard to accept behaviors that are so foreign to my own behaviors and that are in such contradiction to my sense of integrity and ethics. I realize someday, I will just have to accept that I will never understand and although I'm not there yet, I'm getting closer and closer with all the work I've done.
In the second dream, he had asked for my help with something. I don't think we were together at this time anymore and this wasn't something that would benefit me but I agreed to try and help him anyway. Very early on in the interaction, he made an incredibly dismissive comment about something I had suggested and I quickly ended the interaction and walked away, leaving him to figure out whatever he needed help with on his own. I wasn't willing to tolerate his dismissiveness anymore.
The familiarness of the interaction (except the ending of me walking away) made me wonder how often I had to tiptoe around his ego as he benefited greatly from my knowledge but was too insecure to acknowledge it. I always believed we made the best decisions when we both had opportunity to be heard and could combine our knowledge and experience. But I often felt alone in that belief.
He would so often process a decision in his head and by the time he verbalized it to me, not be willing to entertain any questions or discussion on it. He kept trying to remind me that he was an internal processor and my response always was fine but he still needed to bring me in on the discussion at some point and be open to my external processing as I tried to catch up. But I don't think it was about how he processed at all. His ego was just too fragile to accept anything less than an enthusiastic, unquestioning support of anything he said.
I'm really proud though of how quickly I was willing to walk away from a situation where I was not valued. I think that reflects incredible growth.
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