TL;DR! I have had ongoing, inexplicable dreams about my high-school sweetheart, who I broke up with 8 years ago. It’s an emotional rollercoaster and I’m not sure why these dreams are happening.
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Ok psychologists of Reddit, I’m in need of help. I’m typing this at 3 am with tears in my eyes. I am currently dating Jessica, who I have been dating for 3 years, live with, have plans to get a dog with, and marry. However every 2 to 6 weeks, for I think over a year, I have a dream about my ex, Katie.
This may be completely irrelevant, but Katie is absolutely gorgeous. Half Native American, half Lebanese. Tall, dark, and handsome. Jessica is also beautiful. She’s half Indian, half Chinese, and the same height as Katie. They don’t really look like they could be related, but they’re both ethnically ambiguous enough that you might think they’re of the same race. My type is short, blond, blue eyed women, so it kind of confuses my friends. But in these dreams, the girl is definitely Katie, not Jessica. I rarely dream about Jessica.
Katie and I started dating in high school. I was a senior and she was junior, but we went to different schools. Our relationship was very superficial at first. We talked a lot but didn’t really become too physically intimate.
I was accepted to a college out of state and tried to breakup with Katie because I didn’t see much point in the relationship or trying to do long distance. She insisted we give it a go, though, and we dated for another year while I was a freshman. During this time I really fell in love with her; she was my first love and I took her virginity.
Ultimately the relationship didn’t last — too much friction from the distance, our youth, and too many trust issues for both of us. She never shared her true feelings, was always a bit aloof, and part of me feels like I never got to know the real Katie. We were only together for about 2 years.
We had a little bit of closure after the break up. What I don’t understand is that we broke up 8 years ago, and stopped talking ~5 years ago, I’ve since moved on, so why the hell am I still dreaming about her? I’ve had other relationships since, including a 3 year relationship with Alice [24], but I hardly ever think about those other women.
In this last dream we were on some group field trip, staying in a hotel. I think we were broken up but we decided to sneak away because she wanted to have sex. It wasnt really fun though, and even in the dream I could tell there was chasm between us. We looked for a place to have sex, never finding it, and then my subconscious realized it was a dream. Bizarrely, the dream transformed in to me thinking I needed to post about it on Reddit for help. I tried posting to r/offmychest but it had become a Star Wars sub and everybody in my dream just responded with SW quotes or in Yoda’s voice (please don’t do this).
These dreams give me a lot of emotional distress. I’m fine between the dreams, but then I wake up an emotional wreck after I have one. Part of me thinks it’s just nostalgia for my freshman year of college, which was one of the most fun years of my life. It also feels like I’m betraying Jessica with these dreams, though. A side of me wants to contact Katie after I wake up, but then my day gets started and the impulse dies. But I don’t want to dream about Katie for the rest of my life.
5 comments
It’s just a dream. Putting stock into it and letting it control you is going to make you feel a lot worse. This may just be a manifestation of you thinking about your first love (a big step) since you are about to propose to your current gf (a big step). Jessica is who you want to spend the rest of your life with, right? Hold onto that. Things like first loves always look better in the rearview, you are two totally different people now, like you said. Have you talked to your gf about these dreams? I sometimes have dreams about my exes and I’ll wake up, tell my bf “my ex was in my dream. isn’t that weird?”, he’ll say it’s weird, and things are fine. I’m not paranoid because he knows about it and I know the dream doesn’t mean anything.
It sounds like a few factors fueling your dreams. First, humans are problem solving learning animals – it’s a huge part of what we are and what our brains want to do. You had a distance with Katie, you didn’t get to fully know who she is, so there is this nagging thing to discover that your brain wants to work at. When conscious, you can recognize it’s unimportant, but part of you probably still wants to figure it out, which would explain why you dream of her but not other exes. A second factor is that it’s completely normal to dream of people in your past now and then, and especially someone who was in your life a lot and no longer is, but when you wake up, you are putting emotional weight onto this, and then you are trying to understand why you are dreaming about her and you think about that, which significantly increases your likelihood of dreaming about her more. If you had reacted to these dreams with a shrug, weird dream, and going about your life, then you probably would dream about her a lot less often, but having the dreams periodically is causing you to think about them, which causes you to keep having them.
I can’t tell you how to make those dreams stop – I am middle aged and still sometimes get back in high school dreams, just because that was a big part of my life decades ago. But I can tell you that if you stop caring about them or seeing them as meaningful, then there are good odds that the frequency at which they happen will decrease.
Oh dear. If we’re being tried and convicted on the basis of our dreams I’m in deep shit lol.
I occasionally have a dream about my most awful ex – sometimes we’re together and happy, sometimes it’s traumatic (like the end of our relationship) – and I think it’s just the brain’s way of processing stuff. But I wake up to my wonderful husband and happy life and think “shit, that was weird” and move along. That’s just ONE example of my subconscious being not cool. I am also still having “need to take a final for a class I never took” dreams and I’m in my 40s.
I wouldn’t put much stock in this. I think your initial thought that it’s your brain just remembering a past time when you were happy.
Dreams don’t happen for a any reason, they’re random and just dreams. The fact that they distress you so much is the issue. Having plans with your current partner doesn’t mean anything either.
To me it sounds like you’re actually experiencing some commitment issues in a round about way. You’re fantasizing about a person in the past, who does not exist as you knew her anymore, and maybe it’s because you had more excitement and freedom during that time in your life. Maybe you see marriage as the end of excitement or maybe you see it as a big responsibility
All this is totally normal, but I think you need to explore why you’re in this relationship, what the relationship means to you, and the deeper meaning of marriage to you
Here’s my take… this isn’t really about Katie. You’re having stress-dreams related to getting married and “locking away” all other options. The girl in the dream doesn’t even need to be Katie, she’s an avatar for any other possible love of your life.
Once you get over your pre-bridegroom jitters, these dreams should trail away.
Advice: Don’t worry about odd dreams, your brain is just blowing off steam. And above all, **do not contact Katie.**