In a dream my lovers wife addressed me by name and held two…

A surface reading of the symbols gives an emotional portrait of your affair. I assume this portrait is DIFFERENT from your conscious attitude & awareness of the affair. So I will give a naïve reading of your symbols, and if YOU will respond with what you think is really going on in your triangle, we may be able to draw conclusions about what the Higher Power within you is showing you about the situation. First, the”I” & “mine” in the dream are NOT the same as YOU as you imagine yourself in consciousness; this “dream ego” is a character in the drama that has been scripted by the Higher Power Dream Director to show you those aspects of yourself, especially as an intentional actor, that you should pay special attention to.

So the first scene begins with what seems like a SURPRISE revelation, because of the way you’ve written it (correct me if I’ve guessed wrong): that your lover’s wife knows who you are and has two different high-heeled white shoes that she thinks are yours. Do you think it is true that your lover’s wife knows who you are? I’d like to know your reaction to these shoes: Would you wear shoes like either of those you were shown? If not, why not? Do you think SHE would wear shoes like either of those? Who is taller, you or she?

How would you feel if you were wearing either pair of those shoes? How does it affect your self-concept to be wearing high heels like those? Since they are both white, could either pair function as wedding shoes?

Aside from their possible use as wedding shoes, white could symbolize innocence, and high heels could elevate you in status and feminine beauty & drawing attention to yourself. Therefore a possible interpretation of these symbols would be that your rival-hiswife expects you to be A. innocent, B. his newer-taller bride. (But I don’t know enough to imagine what circumstances the wedge shoes would fit for, and what Other circumstances the “classy” pumps would fit (would a wedding fit?) In archetypal symbolism, high heeled women’s shoes are a sex symbol (but usually Black, and the heels have to be slender instead of thick or wedge-shaped); so these aren’t a sex symbol. Or they are a paradoxical sex symbol: They’re a turn-on for men like her husband, and they make you stand taller and more “statuesque” than everyday shoes; but they also reflect “innocence” and functionality instead of fetishism. But they also lift you off the ground, so your soul (the symbolized by the soles of your feet) would be out of touch with the earth you walk on; hence you can’t be on the path of soul.

But we, as viewers of the dream-movie, don’t know the truth of whose shoes they are. For your dream ego only admits she knows your name, but denies that the shoes are yours. Since as a Jungian dream interpreter I assume dreams come from the Higher Power within you to give you insight into yourself (the “dream ego” herself is a “Higher-Power’s view” of you in this affair), there must be a good reason for the shoes AND his wife’s assumption that they’re yours to show up in the dream, AND there must also be a good reason for the movie to show you firmly denying that they’re your shoes. The most economic assumption for this particular plot would be NOT that there’s some other woman involved too, or that his wife is lying and they’re her shoes, but that they ARE your shoes and you’re denying it because you’re trying to protect yourself from possible consequences.

Now the very ambiguous outcome to this first scene leads us to the second scene as its consequence. Here a purely symbolic reading is simple: Your dream ego is in charge and driving the 3some relationship. Your rival-wife is afraid your direction is reckless and the affair is heading for a crash that could hurt everyone. But at least she’s in the front seat, where she has some chance of intervening to save lives (and relationships). Her husband is helpless in the back—which implies also that you don’t really know who he is, because he’s behind you where you can’t see him. Thus he could represent an unconscious figure-or-pattern in your own mind, modeled perhaps on an earlier man you wanted for your own who was married to someone else. [Note that I’m not saying this symbolic source is certain, only that it is possible, for only his position at the back behind your head—hence unconscious=unknown—is explicit in the dream.] He is pouting like a child—perhaps ashamed to be caught cheating and unable to wiggle out of the fix he’s in. In relationship dynamics he has gone from the position of greater power—as the man with two women wanting him—to the position of powerless-and-shamed.

And YOUR dream-ego experiences herself as the most powerful of the three: Because her steering and accelerator can bring damage and pain to everyone involved—of course including yourself.

The final scene has a clear-cut relationship to real life. For by announcing the affair to his wife, or by her finding out about you and confronting you (with the shoes she thinks you’ve been wearing on this path you’ve taken), you really DO have the power to hurt all three persons. You can scare her and make him feel like a naughty child.

SO NOW FOR THE $64,000 question: Which parts of my naïve symbolic reading are THE SAME as what you think is true in real life, and which parts are DIFFERENT? Specifically, 1. Are you known, or on the verge of becoming known to his wife? 2. Do you wear high heels for your walk through life with him that make you stand out above other women as more statuesque, and yet you also perceive yourself as (or appear to be) innocent of any evil seductive intent? 3. Do you perhaps unconsciously imagine yourself to be his new better-bride some time in the not-2-distant future? 4. Do you deny that you have any intent to make him look more at you and take him away from his wife? 5. Are you walking enough above the earth to make yourself look more impressive, and denying that you’ve done that? 6. Are you not in touch with your soul’s actual path in connection with the earth? 7. Does his wife now (or will she soon) see you in the driver’s seat of this 3some with a good chance of accidentally ruining the love-lives of all three people? Or does Higher Power simply give that fearful expression to her as its most natural bearer? 8. Are you aware yourself that your lover has lost his power due to a shift in his relationships—and that he now seems like a disgruntled child with no control over where his life is going?

Remember, I expect that SOME of the reality as you perceive it will be DIFFERENT than the natural answers to the 8 questions above. And I can't expect you to answer all of these questions if you don’t want to. But this is a serious dream with potentially serious insight into your current direction in life. So if you DO answer all of the questions—at least for yourself—and then contemplate carefully what the sum and differences of all those answers may mean for insight into your life, you can get quite a bit from the dream. If you communicate your answers AND your subsequent commentary to me, I’ll do my best to add to your insight by applying my psychological experience and searching for hints at guidelines for future actions from your Higher Power. After all, if YOUR dream-ego is driving the car, perhaps you can conduct it safely to an acceptable destination.