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What feelings about your past relationships remain obscure?
Uh-oh! You thought you were soover him/her! And yet, there you were, locked in a passionate tryst even more intimate than anything you ever experienced in real life together! You might even be with someone else now. So why is your ex popping into your dreams now?
Dreaming of an ex-partner can happen for a variety of reasons, and is nothing to be ashamed of. Conversely, these dreams don’t necesarrily mean you want to or should go rushing back to someone you left behind.
Our previous partners in dreams can appear to help us reconcile the past. Sometimes the ex may represent all past relationships, or the concept of “romantic love” or “The Relationship” - this is more likely if this was your first partner and they made a significant impression on you, or you were with them for a long time, and this person came to represent what it meant to be with someone. When we leave a part of our life behind, our subconscious needs to spend a bit of time reconciling our decisions and feelings, sorting out our emotions from logic, and in this way, help us to learn the profound lessons that came from any relationship and any major life change, and also to ensure we are primed and ready for the next person when they come along. If they have already come along, these dreams of an ex may be our subconscious revisiting the mistakes of the past to ensure they don’t happen again, or in a more positive frame, making sure we have learnt all the right lessons to make sure this relationship has the best chance of success.
When we leave someone behind, we don’t forget them. At some level they will always exist in our mind, so the healthiest way for this to happen is to consciously recognise what was good and what was bad about that relationship, so the memory that lives is like a lesson, a gift for our present or future partner, rather than a ghostly feeling that haunts us because we never really acknowledged what was going on.
Dreams of an ex help us to move on in our lives. They can help us “get over it” where we need to, to help us heal our pain, and sometimes, when we have something new and better, they will remind us of what we were lucky to leave behind, or what we are even more lucky to have now. Dreams of an ex-partner should not induce feelings of guilt in yourself, but I would suggest you be tactful and sensitive if you do mention such dreams to a current partner. Not everyone spends as much time as we do in understanding our dreams, and it may be easy for them to misunderstand such a dream as wish fulfilment or regret. We, of course, know better, don’t we?
[caption id="attachment_302" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What parts of your own personality are you suspicious of?"]
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Dreaming of seeing someone else making love, especially if that someone is our partner, can really test our ability to be logical and objective. So you know by now dreams are all going on your own head, then why do you feel so worried and hurt?
The first thing to do is take a big deep breath and a reality check. Nothing is more sure to poison a relationship than suspicion and lack of trust. The next thing to do is look at why we are dreaming about our partner having sex with some one else. What can this mean? Well, I will say it again, but it can mean many things depending on what is going on in our lives.
To start to understand what this dream may mean for you, try listing down all the feelings that came up for you in your dream. Did you feel hurt, betrayed, angry, depressed? Did you feel detached like you didn’t really care? Did you feel resigned, like you were somehow expecting it to happen? Next, look at where in your life you may be having these feelings. What do these feelings remind you of?
If we remember that the person in our dream is really just us, to see our partner cheating on us can mean that in some way we are cheating on ourselves. It could mean we are lying to ourselves about our true feelings, or that we are ignoring something important, hiding it away like an illicit affair.
Dreams of seeing our partner with another can lead us to question:
- What in my life am I hiding that I should really bring out into the open?
- Where am I denying myself the love and affection I crave?
- How am I cheating myself out of something I really deserve?
Did you really see what you thought you saw? Dream lovers are often not what they seem
Dreams of cheating can be a sign that we aren’t letting all aspects of our personality be together in a happy and harmonious way. Seeing our partner make love to someone else reminds us that we need to be involved with all aspects of who we are, and invites us to address the parts of us we ignore. Remember as well, just as the partner you see in your dream is a part of you, so too is the person they are having sex with a part of you as well. The question then, is why do you feel so detached that you have watch other parts of yourself together, and yet keep yourself so distant? What are you watching but not participating in?
Dreams of witnessing a betrayal can also be a reminder of past hurt. If you have felt let down or abandonded, cheated on or lied to in the past, you may fear the same thing happenning again, which can cause these kinds of dreams to surface. But if we overcome our own insecurites and fears, we can create an atmosphere of love and trust, where relationships can thrive. Insecurity and doubt are no foundation for a happy life!
The most important things with dreams of seeing your partner with someone else, is not to imagine that this is really about your partner or the person they are with. That other “someone else” is you too. What is it about that other person that in your dream your partner likes? How can you be more like that? The “other woman” or “other man” in your dream can be a symbol for characteristics you wish to hide from your self. These kind of dreams invite us to become the other woman or other man. Write down what qualities they have, that will help you separate the person from the symbolic meaning. Maybe it’s time to embrace those qualities you are ashamed of, or let go of a past hurt and enjoy the present, and your realtionship, for what it is, here and now.
Dreaming of making love can be a symbol of unity and integration
Now enough about bad dreams for the time being! Let’s look at something altogether more pleasant in dreams: having sex or making love. Well at least it should be pleasant, but sadly the reality is often quite different. Even though the dream itself of a sexual union may be enjoyable, even orgasmic, often when we wake we are plagued by feelings of doubt and confusion. “I had sex with who???”
Firstly , let us address some of the common misconceptions about sex dreams:
- 1. Dreaming of sex with someone means that person has secret feelings for me. Uh-uh, sorry, no. Dreaming of having sex with the cute next door neighbour or the pretty girl you see on the train has nothing to do with how they feel about you. This something that is going on in your own mind, and does not in any way give you some secret insight into their feelings about you.
- Dreaming of having sex with someone means deep down I really do want to have sex with them. Chances are, probably not. In some cases sexual dreams may indeed be wish fulfilment, but more often than not we dream of having sex with someone because they represent a certain quality or particular attribute (see my post on “Other People.”) The sex is not about them individually, but what that person symbolises to you.
- Dreaming of having sex with someone is like cheating on my partner. Not at all. This is all going on in your mind, and is about integrating different parts of your self. Remember, these people aren’t really them, but a symbol. Similarily, sex it self can be a symbol of union. So you should not feel guilty about creating a union with different aspects of your own personality.
So what are dreams of making love and having sex all about then? As for any symbol, this can mean multiple things, especially when we consider the complex feelings of guilt, responsibility, comitment, love, enjoyment, power and freedom that get all wrapped up in our sexuality. The first place to start is to look at whether you enjoyed the feeling in your dream. If you did, I would recommend you not plague yourself with feelings of guilt and remorse upon waking. Think of it as the highest form of self love, that you are integrating all the aspects of your personality into a unifed whole. As you relax and enjoy your own night lovers, you may realise you feel more relaxed in waking life, and that rather than detract from your waking relationship, these dreams contribute to it. You may feel closer to your partner, you may feel that the extra attention you give yourself in your dreams is enough to reduce demands on your partner so you can enjoy each other more; or these dreams may help you feel satisfied that you are passionately loved, that you don’t need to seek trivial or superficial stimulation with others elsewhere. This could be a simple as not feeling the need to flirt, to actually preventing a doomed liaison.
The mysterious stranger may be our own internal opposite, the Yang to our Yin
While a sexual union with a particular person can represent you absorbing some of the qualities that person represents to you into your own life, sex in a dream can also be a symbol for us embracing our opposite. We each have a Yin and Yang; a dark, internal, receptive, emotional right brained side and a bright, outter, active, logical left brained side. In a Jungian approach this could be our anima and animus, the female side that lives in evey male and the male side that lives in every female. To dream of making love to a mysterious stranger often represents us becoming more balanced, as our two opposing sides merge in a beautiful union. This is often a sign of great growth and personal development, something that should be enjoyed and celebrated!
So before you blush and squirm at the thought of who you had sex with in your dreams last night, remember, not only is the person likely to be representative of something other than who they are, but even the very act of making love could be more about personal integration than a subliminal fantasy. It is no bad thing to love one’s self.
Before we go on and look at some other big themes and common symbols in dreams, I thought it worthwhile clarifying a question that comes up a lot about the people who star in our dreams. So many people say “I dreamt of this guy/girl at work, I dreamed about an old friend/relative/lover etc. Why am I dreaming about them?” Even strangers we barely know, people we have noticed for only a fleeting moment at the shop, on the train, passing by on the street, all can make guest appearances in your nightly imaginings. What do they have to tell us?
The first thing to get clear is that dreaming of these people is not wish fulfilment (no you don’t really want to “have sex with/kill/insert other bizzare action” with these people.) Despite the sniggers you may hear when you say “I dreamed about so and so last night” and the reply “yeah? was it good?”, such replies really display a basic lack of knowledge of dreams and what they are all about.
Remember, dreaming occurs only in your head. These other people haven’t magically popped into your head of their own will - you are imagining them through a dream. Just think if you dream of others in this way, even strangers and people you don’t especially care about, how often have you made a guest appearance in somebody else’s dream? Which leads us back to the original question – why this particular person, at this particular time? Like all symbols in our dreams, people represent something other than what they are. Remember our dreams speak to us in pictures, and they try to use elements from our everyday life that are familiar to us. So going back to the practice of explaining symbols in your dream as you would to a child from the previous post, do the same thing for the person. Describe their character, their personality, their relationship to you. Then look at those words, not the person and see what they mean to you.
Using the example of Bob the neighbour from the previous “Attack” post: he lives close to me, and I feel like he is always butting in to my affairs. He is always criticising with a harsh tone and makes me feel uncomfortable. This can you help you understand where in yourself you are being critical and harsh. When you dream of attacking Bob, you dream isn’t telling you that you really want to attack Bob (even though in real life you may find him annoying) it is actually revealing what you have in common with Bob, and how you want to silence your own inner critic, your own “inner Bob.”
Sex and love dreams can make us feel equally uncomfortable. But instead of thinking of this as some fantasy to be ashamed of, go through the same process of describing the person and their defining characteristics from your perspective, and then view the sex/love actions in the dream as areas of your own personality you are coming to love, new aspects of yourself you are embracing. These dreams are not about wish fullfilment but about personal healing and finding unity within your self. For example, you might dream of sex with the boss. You might describe your boss as uncompromising, influential, powerful and a strong leader. This dream would indicate that you are starting to embrace your own leadership qualities, and learning to wield your own influence and power. So don’t feel ashamed, but maybe refrain from sharing this dream with the boss or anyone else at work who is unlikely to understand the metaphor!
Another aspect of the male/female unity dream is of embracing our own opposite sides. Jung believes each man has a feminine side, and each woman a masculine. Finding the correct balance in a society that defines these roles for us can be challenging. A man dreaming of sex with a strange or beautiful woman is not likely to be thinking about cheating, but more positively, is probably becoming more in tune with his feminine side, maybe getting more in touch with his emotions. Similarly, a woman dreaming about making love to a gorgeous male stranger is not necessarily having a fantasy, but more likely embracing her own masculine qualities, such as maybe learning to stand up for herself or become more assertive. Often these dreams will seem more than simply sex, and have a profound love or even spiritual aspect to them. This is a true sign of internal healing or growth. And it is not “cheating” on your partner! Rather, your partner is likely to enjoy the new energy and confidence such dreams create as you embrace your entire true nature.
There is one aspect though, depending on your own personal beliefs about life and death, where to dream of another person may not be symbolic. That is when you dream of someone you love who has departed this mortal coil. I know controversy exists around this, but I personally believe that to dream of a deceased loved one, (especially when quite recently departed), whether you believe they actually appear in spirit form or not, can still be a profoundly moving experience, and one that cannot be adequately explained by referring to that person as a metaphor or symbol. In these instances, the person is simply them-self, and to dream of them can be a step in the healing process of mourning, grief and loss. These dreams are like gifts, psychic hugs if you will, that help us along the path to acceptance and recovery.
So, next time you dream you are attacking the neighbour or sleeping with the boss, remember to stop and think what these people represent to you. They are not themselves, simply masks your dream has used to express a concept too difficult to condense into words.
