Intense Dreams About Ex

Hey guys, wondering if anyone is familiar with dreams, and how to interpret.

I realize dreams can be ambiguous in meaning, but if one has a recurring dream, surely there must be some underlying reason why this is happening?

So my story. I had a very intense relationship (sexually mostly but emotionally also due to the sexual nature of it) with my ex for six years (lived together, eventually got engaged).

We broke up in December 2015 (his addiction to meth, coke, alcohol and everything that resulted from that -- i. e. cheating, lying).

I will refrain from sharing all the gory details, but he eventually went into rehab after we broke up, after which he attempted to get back together with me several times.

It had been a long time and I had essentially shut down and just wasn't "feeling it." I just wanted to continue moving on, plus for me the TRUST was gone which I finally told him. It was a tough emotional convo.

This convo happened last year; since then he has left me alone.

Fast forward to now. I have been having these very intense dreams about him lately, last night I had another one -- sexual (they're not all sexual though).

Which isn't surprising since that is mostly what kept us together and our relationship so intense and passionate all those years.

But I DO want and need more now and last year, when we talked he told me HE did too. Wanted to try again, different this time.

But like I said, too late, TRUST was gone.

My friend on this board mentioned to me recently how much I still refer to him and our relationship on this board. She mentioned she still thought I had deep feelings for him that I was suppressing, out of fear.

In any event, can anyone who has studied or familiar with dream interpretation explain to me what the hell is gong on and WHY, lately, I am having these intense dreams about him?

Does it mean I still DO have feelings for him? That I have been denying?

Is it totally crazy to believe that after all this time, it might be worth seeing him and perhaps giving us another go?

There was a lot of love there I just think it was channeled too much towards sexual intimacy, maybe due to our respective fears of being more emotionally open and vulnerable with each other.

ETA: Forgot to mention that I have been reading about dream interpretation and it said that my ex simply "represents" something that I desire to have in my life (more emotional intimacy and vulnerability with a man). NOT necessarily with him.

Thoughts?

Imo, dreams can be about "decompressing" deeper repressed past desires. In order to uphold your boundaries you had to repress your addiction to him and that pend up energy is probably the cause of your dreams. However, this doesn't mean that you should go back to him. Six years of an established unhealthy emotional pattern is pretty tough to break, plus, once trust is gone, there is bound to be toxicity leaking from that past hurt during times of pressure. As much as you would like things to be different, I find it highly unlikely that your relationship could work because it is built on a foundation of hurt and broken trust. If you were to give it another go, once life throws some adversity to you, and it usually does this at some point, one or both of you would be liable to revert to the destructive interaction that you have established between the two of you over many years. Given his past of heavy addiction, I think that you would need to be alert during difficult times/ he would not make a good candidate in terms of someone to lean on/provide support and that is not a nice way to live your life. Since you have come so far, it might be best to keep going. As for the dreams, it may be a way for the mind to release/let go of that deeper desire you had. At least, such has been my experience with an ex when he got married. In my case, I dreamed that we were kissing even though I rarely remember my dreams in the first place and I believe that was a way for my mind to "live out" and thus release this hope I had that would never be...

Thanks Clio.

I think you are 100% right on.

Even if no one else responds, this helped tremendously.

I just hope the dreams stop soon as they're actually quite haunting.

But perhaps they're also healing in a way too.

I agree 1000% that you still have feelings for him, possibly even very powerful ones, that you are repressing out of fear and broken trust, and that your dreams are your mind's way of expressing those feelings.

However, that doesn't mean you should go running back to him. Fear isn't really a bad thing: it's your mind's way of protecting you from harm. He did a lot of damage to you, and that's not something that just love can overcome. However, if he is genuinely willing to work on the relationship and you think many of his issues have been resolved, you shouldn't let fear hold you back from at least exploring the possibility if that's what you want.

A head coach was asked about "Momentum" and does he feel if the opposing team now has momentum when it came to a playoff series. The coach answered "Momentum is important if you think its important"

Same thing applies here with dreams. If you buy books and try to decode your dreams, then all you are doing is giving an importance to them. If you don't think about them, they are not important.

I have extremely vivid dreams. I could come on here daily and tell you about a dream I had. An example would be I had a dream that I was helping a family escape the fighting during the Revolutionary war. I could describe the house, the basement, and even tell you what the 3 kids were wearing. However..what I don't try to do is decode it. I don't wake up and look for a meaning behind it. The night before I dreamt I was in a car crash and hurt my head. Again, I don't give it a meaning behind it. All dreams are, are random thoughts that the frontal lobe tries to make sense of. Sometimes its the last thing you think of, (like a movie you saw) or can be something that dominated your day or thoughts, or something that left an impression.

Dreams of an X is common. Maybe you fall back to a comfortable place when you are stressed, or you think of your X before you go to bed, (read emails or texts) or he dominates your thoughts all day. There is something in your head that triggers a memory. Otherwise, its just random impulses in the brain that mean nothing.

If you believe the dream as being important, then it is. Its how you believe it to be true.

 

Given his past of heavy addiction, I think that you would need to be alert during difficult times/ he would not make a good candidate in terms of someone to lean on/provide support and that is not a nice way to live your life. ...

I just read Clio's post again, and I missed ^ this when I first read.

To the contrary, during our entire RL, I was able to lean on him for support and strength, I used to post about this on another forum.

He was my rock after I lost both my parents in 2014, and at other times during our RL too. He enjoyed being my rock actually and would encourage me to lean on him more even.

Not that I am an overly needy person by any stretch (quite the opposite in fact) but he was definitely the stronger one, emotionally.

That is actually one thing I regret, not conveying to him (either through words or actions) that HE could lean on me too!

Our dynamic was such that he was the strong, dominant one (NOT in an abusive or controlling way) and I was more passive.

I followed his lead most if not all the time. THIS I regret because in a sense I compromised myself. I vow to never do this again, with any man.

Sexually it was a sub/dom RL, which worked for BOTH of us. It was a very intense and intimate RL, however like I said, due to our respective fears, the intimacy was geared more towards the sexual side.

IF we were to give it another shot (which is a big IF as I have no idea what's going on with him, he could be in another serious RL by now for all I know), it would be different.

We discussed this when we talked last year, and he expressed HE wanted it to be different too. But like I said, for me the trust was gone, so I just couldn't go back there. Not at that point in time anyway.

But yes, like Clio said, it was most definitely an addiction of sorts, for both of us. We both admitted it.

BUT, all that said, it's been a long time and we've both been through so much since. Learned, grown, evolved. I know I have and can only assume he has too.

I don't know, my brain has been spinning so I am just rambling off thoughts. I thought ENA would be a safe place to do so, being anonymous and all.

So thanks for listening guys!

If anyone has more to add, I am open to listening.

So to all the kind folks who responded (and anyone else interested in dream interpretation), thought I'd provide an update:

After starting the thread, the dreams about my ex stopped that night, and no I never contacted him and won't.

However, since experiencing this, I found the dreams to be quite healing which was corroborated in a few articles I read over the weekend about the healing power of dreams.

Extremely enlightening! It essentially said that I still had feelings that were simply buried underneath and actually preventing me from moving forward!

All subconscious of course, not consciously aware of this at all, until, of course, the dreams.

Why my subconscious chose this point in time to do its thing is anyone's guess, I had not even been thinking of him, but doesn't really matter in the grand scheme.

This is gonna sound totally hokey to some but what those articles said is that the dreams allowed all those unresolved feelings that were buried deep down to rise to the surface to be released!

And what's interesting is that this weekend, I ended up changing all my passwords (which contained his name in them, still), boxing up all memorabilia, even tossing some and other things away, reflecting that I was finally ready to put this chapter behind me, once and for all.

I will treasure the memories (the good positive ones of which there were many) but that is it, and I gotta say it feels so freeing!

So in the end, the dreams, while somewhat haunting (and daunting!), actually turned out to be a positive thing, very healing.

Thanks again to all who responded!