Marriage and wedding

Feelings about being or getting married; uniting two different aspects of yourself such as intellect and feelings, practical and intuitive self; the ‘marriage’ between conscious and unconscious self – any children of the marriage would be flowering of new abilities or qualities. But children of married partners can often indicate the state of the marriage, its problems of wonders.

Sometimes it refers to what our energy or drive is uniting us with – such as a new business venture or creative scheme – any children of this type of marriage suggest our intuitive assessment of the likely outcome.

There are many urges in a woman or man other than getting a good partner. There is also the urge to find recognition in society, to move toward independence, to find a comfortable place in life – probably alone, to achieve financial independence, or to have children.

In some cultures dreaming of a wedding signifies a death in the family.

But from the viewpoint of the unconscious marriage is not about a church or civil ceremony. As the most orthodox church Catholicism states, you are not married unless you have had penetrative sexual intercourse. If that has not happened there is no need for divorce because marriage never took place.

The unconscious sees it similarly. As soon as you have penetrative sex with anybody you have formed links that are not physically visible but make a form of marriage. But it has to be between a woman and a man, for marriage is a holy rite leading to the wonder of procreation, the giving of life, which is what we are all about being life forms; which is  holy, not because the church says so, but because Life itself is a holy mystery.  So a man can never be married in the true sense to another man, or a woman to a woman. They can have a civil ceremony but not a real marriage.

But although the point of marriage is procreation, in dreams the creation of a child still takes place as many woman and men have dream children – which is the birth of a new part of oneself. It is a bringing to consciousness a new part of you that has been developing but remained previously unexpressed. Such births need to be honoured even though there is no physical sign of a child. So the new dreamt baby is a vulnerable part of you that needs care to grow and become a real part of your waking life.

But from this viewpoint there are two types of marriage, the first is through sexual intercourse between a woman and man. The second is through a complete union of the whole couple. Some believe that the spiritual marriage comes through the agreement to abstain from sex which should be a free mutual decision, rather than resulting from impotence or the views of one party. But experience shows another view which arises as one is able to open one’s life to the divine within you. This leads to the full marriage which includes the body, the personality and the divine impulse.

Example: I was led into the experience of my merging with Divine Love in marriage – when I married P. Gradually I was led to realise that it wasn’t me and P. that were married, the marriage was between the duality if Life meeting itself in wonder and love. This went on to a visionary experience of knowing the birth of each of us was the birth of wonder, of light and transcendence. I realised that we are all then ‘put down’ by those who raise us, and so the light we are is dimmed to an extraordinary degree. And I carried this light to my own spiritual self and all the women and men – including my children – who I loved. This felt incredibly real as if they would realise for themselves that they are married to the Highest. Example: I wanted them in some way to share what I had experienced – that the most high had incarnated into us.  God was not outside of us.  We are it, living this strange, often difficult, but wonderful life.  To have experienced that divine union in myself in the images of the divine female and the divine male as we join in a wondrous union, still moves me deeply as I write this.  To be shown once more that I am, as we all are, an incarnation of that very mystery of life, is a very great gift.

Dreaming of wedding if single: As in the example below, Mary could equally as well have dreamt she was the bride, but being in her thirties and unmarried it is easier for her to consider or experiment with the idea of marriage using the image of her friend. Should she marry whoever offers? When single one often dreams of marriage as a way of clarifying – what it would be like; could one succeed in it; is the present partner okay; how shall one achieve it? Man dreaming of marriage: For a man marriage faces him with something quite different to a woman dreaming of marriage. It is a woman’s initiation, and a man may feel as if he has to give up his manhood. So he may be facing such fears in his dreams – although marriage is a meeting and often a merging with his feminine self. For a man it can also be intimating the uniting of his female characteristics. See hermaphrodite; archetype of the anima Marriage: When a woman and man marry, something that often happens is that the woman interiorises the man and feels she is now complete. She has her man in her life and in her. The man can do the same thing. That is fine when it works by them staying together faithfully. But if the man leaves the woman, or the woman leaves the man, because they had taken their partner into them to become whole, the leaving feels like something has been ripped out of them. It is a terrible shock. See Archetype of the Animus Wedding dress: Feelings and hopes about relationship and wedding; in a negative dream it represents anxieties about ones relationship or the future. Wedding dress given by mother: Qualities and strengths or problems absorbed from mother about relationship; letting go of external mother by expressing her qualities in the present. 

Example: I am at the wedding of my best friend. The groom doesn’t turn up and she decides to marry the first person who comes along. I wonder whether this is a good thing to do.’ Mary T. Example: When I was engaged to my present husband I dreamt we were married and I looked down at my wedding ring. It was twisted and bent. In fact I now see it as a warning because we have not made a good marriage.’ S.W. Example: I am a gay 20 year old woman. I’ve been in a relationship with my girlfriend for about four months now. Previously, she had been my best friend for six years. Last night, I dreamt that we were married. I didn’t dream of a honeymoon, or announcing our marriage, or even proposing or anything of that nature. In the dream, I just…knew that we were married. My girlfriend’s hair was significantly longer than it normally is, if that means anything. In the dream, she insisted that she wanted to have a baby, and she wanted to do it by becoming pregnant through a sperm donor. It was a little strange, because neither of us are really keen on the idea of having kids at all, much less actually becoming pregnant. We were both excited about it in the dream though. Example: It was the realisation that in the little community I live in I am the only single male. I am feeling, or guessing, that the other males here are curious about that. This led me onto spontaneous speculations about what this meant in my life and whether it was a problem I was not looking at. I saw that some of the women in my life have wanted me to be more fully involved as their partner. I sometimes puzzle why I don’t have the same need, or I don’t feel the same need in reverse. As I explored this it felt as if I didn’t want to be contained within a woman’s needs. It reminds me of the proprietorial aspect of male female relationships.

See: Integrating the female in the male; Integrating the male in the female; bride; bridegroom.