Every so often dreams stick with me and this one has for months not because it was anything terribly special on its own, but because my husband and I had the same dream and it seems like it has to mean something. It's night and I hear something. I go out on the porch and coyotes are starting to assemble at the top of the hill to the right of our property. I call to my husband, "They're here," and he comes out. Then they attack. Sort of. They more overwhelm. There are hundreds of them and they just keep coming. We run down to the henhouse, trying to defend the chickens as we shout and swing sticks at them. They totally ignore us. There is no growling, no threatening, no aggression whatsoever. They don't even make eye contact with us. Their focus is singularly on the hen house and we are wading through this sea of coyotes trying to beat them back. We shout, whack the fence with the sticks, swing at them, but everything just sort of makes them shy back for a second, but it doesn't deter them. The only thing that sort of works is to pretend to shoot them with the sticks. Then they retreat to the edge of the property, but there are always several more to replace every one we "shoot." The feeling in the dream is one of complete futility. I want to give up. I don't want to fight. I know I'm losing and that we can't defeat the coyotes or defend the chickens, but I fight because there is nothing else to do. I want to give up more than I remember ever wanting to do anything, but I don't know how. Then the baby cries and I wake up. But my husband, who was in a hotel, keeps dreaming. Oddly enough, in the middle of his dream, I run into the house to make sure the children are alright and he is left to fight the coyotes alone. He keeps fighting until sunrise. With the first rays of sunlight, the coyotes disappear. When the sun comes up, it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Everything is glistening, the orchard (that we hadn't yet planted) is bearing fruit, our flock is out free ranging contentedly and everything we had ever talked about was there and thriving and beautiful. He wanted to come and get me to show me, but then he woke up. He remembers it as one of the best dreams he's had. I remember it as an exercise in some sort of bizarre tenacity, fighting more against my own desire to give up than against the threat of the coyotes. But what is it all supposed to mean?
Well, the fact that you and your husband had practically the same dream shows that you have a very strong emotional connection and you see things in the same way - you even use the same dream symbols. Have you been married very long? I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, it means that you understand each other well and it prevents you from having too many conflicts. On the other hand, I think that a relationship needs balance and it is good for the two people in a relationship to be able to see things in different ways and for each person to develop as an individual. It sounds like you are both aware of something that is threatening you. Can you think of what it might be?