When I was 17, I dated a guy for just over a year. He was my first love, first everything really. He broke up with me right before I turned 18 (we were still in high school). I know for a fact that I’m over him but on occasion I’ll have dreams about him and we’ll be dating in the dream or flirting or something. For context I’ve been in a relationship with my current boyfriend (25M) for well over a year and I’m really happy with him and love him a lot. So what does this mean? Am I reading too far into it? Is this happening cause he was so important to me at the time? Help please!
tl;dr – I keep having dreams about my high school ex despite being in a happy, stable relationship
4 comments
I think you’re reading too far into it. Our brains are weird and we sometimes have dreams of people who aren’t in our lives anymore. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
Your brain uses dreams to process things and run scenarios, and people who were once a large part of your life are frequent participants, especially if you have any unresolved trauma- a friend of mine had dreams for years about one FWB who was particularly on and off with her, and her therapist told her that the dreams were helping her work through mental trauma she had from him.
Your memories are like cards in a deck of cards. When you are dreaming, your brain shuffles all of them up, and that Joker you thought you set aside gets drawn, and Voila! As you get older you’ll continue to have dreams from parts of your life. Some stuff is obviously not real and gets mixed in with real life. You’ll dream of your current friends in your childhood home mixed with things that never happened. Some are scary, some are fun, some create nostalgia, etc.
You’re reading into it. I have similar dreams but I always dream about my grandparents old house. They haven’t lived there in 15 or so years, and yet it’s constantly the backdrop to many of my dreams. Dreams are weird!!