Dreaming about
your wife

Of all the people we share our lives with, a wife is usually the one we see first thing and last thing every day. That alone is reason enough for her to fill our dreams. Dreaming about your wife usually reflects how connected the marriage feels right now and how you see yourself in it (as a partner, a parent, or someone who's been absent lately). Most of those dreams are ordinary and quickly forgotten. The ones people remember and search for are the painful ones, where she cheats, leaves or simply can't be found.

Those dreams rarely tell you anything about her. They tend to come from distance, guilt or insecurity on your side. Think of a long stretch of work, a row that never got settled, or a new baby that has reshaped the marriage. How things have been between you this month is the best guide to what the dream means.

What dreaming about your wife means

Most wife dreams pick up the state of the marriage, the way you'd notice the weather in a room, without anyone saying a word. Three readings come up again and again.

How close you feel

A wife who laughs with you, holds your hand or is simply there in a dream usually reflects a marriage that feels steady. A wife who's distracted, cold or always in the next room usually reflects distance, and it's often distance you've felt but haven't named. Dreams follow the relationships that take up our thoughts,^[1] so a quiet worry about the marriage tends to surface this way.

How you see yourself as a partner

Many wife dreams are really about you, and about the kind of partner you think you're being. Are you working too much, missing dinners, not pulling your weight at home? A dream where she's disappointed, or where you can't get home to her, is often your own conscience at work. But it can also reflect pressure you feel to provide or protect, whether or not she's ever asked you to.

The life you've built

A wife can also stand for the home and family you've made together. Dreams of her in the house, with the children or at a family gathering often come when that life is changing (a move, a birth, a parent's illness). In them you're checking how solid it all still feels.

Dreaming about your wife cheating

Seeing your wife with another man, or another woman, is the most searched wife dream, and it can stay with you all day. But it doesn't mean she's unfaithful. It usually reflects insecurity, the sense of being less desired or less interesting than you used to be, and it's most common after long hours or a stretch with little intimacy. If the other man was someone you know, ask what he has that you feel you lack. There's a whole article on dreams about a partner cheating if you want to go deeper.

Dreaming about cheating on your wife

Cheating in a dream leaves plenty of men guilty for a dream they didn't choose, and the guilt is often the most useful part. And the dream rarely points to a real wish for an affair. More often it reflects something missing, like novelty, freedom, or feeling admired, or guilt about something unrelated, like time you've taken for yourself. If the other woman was a stranger, think about what she stood for, and if she was someone you know, what quality of hers you've been noticing.

Dreaming about losing your wife

You turn around in a crowd, a shop or an airport and she's gone, and you search with rising panic. This dream is about fear of losing the relationship, or of losing touch with her as a person. It's common when you've been so busy that you feel more like colleagues than partners. If you found her again, notice where. The place can say something about where the two of you could reconnect.

Dreaming about your wife being pregnant

This dream comes to men whose wives are pregnant, men trying for a child, and men with no plans for children at all. And it's not a sign she's expecting. It usually points to something new in the marriage or in your shared life, like a move, a business or a new chapter, and to how ready you feel.

Dreaming about your wife dying

A wife dying in a dream is terrifying, and it doesn't predict anything. It usually reflects how much she means to you, or a fear of being alone, often triggered by her being ill, traveling, or by a friend losing a partner. Sometimes what's ending is a stage of the marriage, like the children leaving home or one of you retiring. If your wife has died, dreaming about her is part of grief, and many widowers find these dreams a comfort.

Dreaming about your ex-wife

Your ex-wife rarely turns up in a dream as herself. She brings back the whole marriage, the house you shared, the arguments you had, the man you were at thirty, and she tends to arrive when something today rhymes with that time. Is your new partner about to move in? Did your son just turn the age he was when you split? None of it means you want her back. There's more on dreaming about your ex on its own page, and on divorce dreams too.

Dreaming about your wife according to Jung and Freud

Jung has a name for the woman who appears in a man's dreams, and two of Freud's ideas meet in the dream of a wife who leaves.

Jung: the wife and the anima

Jung's name for the feminine figure in a man's dreams was the anima, a woman who carries the side of him he hasn't lived, and Man and His Symbols describes how a man tends to project that figure onto a real woman.^[4] Read that way, the wife in a dream isn't always your wife. A dream wife who is glamorous, who feels like a stranger in your own kitchen or who walks out may be the anima in her face, and the question becomes what in yourself you've handed her to carry. This is his idea applied, not something he said about wives.

Freud: the departure and the day before

Freud usually started from the day before, and with a wife the day before is rarely empty: the argument at breakfast, the call that ran long. He also noticed that a departure or a journey in a dream can be dying in disguise,^[2] and he placed the death of someone you love among the typical dreams. By his logic, then, the wife who boards the plane without you and the wife who dies in the dream come from one fear of loss in two disguises.

Other readings

Rosalind Cartwright, a Chicago sleep scientist, followed 30 people going through a divorce and found that the more they worried about the former spouse while awake, the more often that person turned up in their dreams.^[5]

The biblical and spiritual meaning of your wife in dreams

Two texts, one from the Gospels and one from the Sunni hadith, put a wife at the center of a dream.

Joseph's dream in Matthew

In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant and plans to break off their engagement quietly. Then a dream tells him not to be afraid to take her as his wife.^[3] The text goes no further than that, and it doesn't say what your dream means.

A wife in the Prophet's dream

Among the Sunni hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari reports that before his marriage to Aisha an angel showed her to him in a dream, wrapped in silk, and told him she was his wife.^[6] In Islamic belief a prophet's dream is a different thing from an ordinary believer's, so this describes a wife in a dream and offers no rule for yours.

Questions to ask about your wife dream

The reading depends on your marriage, and you know it better than any dictionary does, so start from these questions.

• Was she the wife you know, or a version from earlier in your marriage?
• How have the last few weeks been between you?
• Is anything changing at home, work or in the family?
• What did you feel in the dream: jealousy, guilt, panic, tenderness?
• What would she say the dream is about, if you told her?

Oniri asks about your marriage and what's changed lately before it reads a dream like this. A missing wife at an airport means one thing after a fight and another after a promotion.