Dreams of a lost love

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This topic has 8 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 9 months ago by Anonymous.

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July 28, 2017 at 10:40 am #160780

Lucy
Participant

Hi everyone,

because everyone is so nice on here, I want to get something else off my chest and see if anyone out there has had a similar situation. I have never been able to tell anyone I know this, because they wouldn’t understand.

I broke up with my ex 7 years ago and to this day I still dream of him. Some mornings I wake up and there is an instant emotional heartbreak I feel about missing him that can last throughout the day.

This is very confusing for me because I am with someone else now who is the kindest most gentle man and we are very much in love. It’s just sometimes I feel there is mourning going on inside my heart and its actually painful. The dreams wont let me forget this man. We weren’t right for each other. He was kind but very self centred and he didn’t love me the way I loved him. I think he loved me as much as he possibly could at that time.

I have been having these dreams on and off for 7 years! I recently saw him at a wedding and my heart felt like it was going to explode and I felt sick. I avoided him and he avoided me and I was ok with that. After the wedding the dreams increased and I felt awful for 2 weeks. I don’t understand this at all. I don’t want this to happen anymore.

Has anyone else experienced this?

July 28, 2017 at 12:02 pm #160804

Eliana
Participant

Hi Lucy,

You said, at the wedding, you avoided him, and he avoided you. There is a reason for that, and that is because it has been seven years, and you both are no longer the same people you were then. You have grown and changed, and most likely, he has grown, moved on and changed, hence the reason for avoiding each other. When you are away from someone that long, it is very hard to rekindle the love, chemistry and sparks. You may not be missing him, but the memories, the good memories, of nostalgia, back when times were simpler and when you were giddy, happy and in love. Remember, you broke up for a reason. If you were really meant to be together, you would be together, or would have connected at the wedding. Also, there is something about weddings that tend to make us feel nostalgic and somewhat lonesome.

July 28, 2017 at 12:21 pm #160816

Peter
Participant

I can relate to your story

In dream analyses and symbolic language; the people, animals and objects we meet in our dreams represent attributes, feelings, thinking, dreams… of the dreamer. The dreams a likely not about reconnecting to you X but to yourself in some way.

It seems the unconscious preferred way to communicate to the conscious is through the symbolic language of images.

In your dream your X would likely represent qualities that you might have associated with him as having as well as the hopes and dreams you may have had about yourself when you were together but that now you may be disconnected from.

When we are with someone we care about and who cares about us we feel empowered, we are empowered. We tend to imagine that we can become the best version of ourselves.

After a breakup we often lose that imagined future or ourselves or become disconnected from it. At the same time our understanding of Love and relationship is challenged. Your dreams could be an indication of unfinished work in dealing with that loss.

In dream interpretation asking the right questions can help.

What qualities would you associate with you X?

Which qualities do you also have and which ones do you think you don’t have?

Of the qualities that you don’t think you have which ones would you like to develop?

Do the same type of questioning with your thinking and feelings with regards to the idea of Love and Relationship that you may have had during your relationship with your X.

How did you see your future self while in that relationship?

Has an attribute, dream, hope that you may have had been lost? Were you too innocent? Did you become disillusion in anyway? Did you lose a creative spark?

In such an interpretation the dream would not be about reconnecting to your X, or be about your X at all.

Instead it is likely that its about reconnecting or making conscious something you have forgotten about your self, perhaps a better way to love yourself, forgive yourself….

My hunch is that once you do the dream work, the dreams will stop and you will have learned something about yourself that will make your current relationships even stronger.

July 28, 2017 at 12:25 pm #160818

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Lucy:

A long time ago I experienced extended longing for a man who didn’t love me. I think it happened because there was nothing else to long for, no better love story to take the place of the very inadequate one.

Reads to me that this is not your case, since you are having a loving relationship currently. I am thinking of your other thread. Both have the theme of holding on to the past, and in both cases that past was painful or unpleasant.

I wonder if this thought of mine, regarding the theme, can possibly lead to a better understanding.

anita

July 29, 2017 at 3:09 am #160872

Lucy
Participant

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions.

I have thought about this and I think its possible that its because I felt rejected by him and so I cant seem to let go of the feeling of rejection. It hurt me really bad at the time because I loved and cared about him. Its frustrating because I feel I have wasted a lot of energy trying to let that situation go and it was over 7 years ago! I will be living my life happily but when I have a dream it brings weird emotions and I feel low and think too much about the past. I don’t know if its because I never got closure. I just don’t want to think about him anymore because I genuinely am in love with someone else and this relationship is way better in every way! I tried opening up to my friend but I get the sense when I do that he gets mad because he thinks I’m still holding on and in a way my mind is not letting me forget.

July 29, 2017 at 4:16 am #160874

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Lucy:

You wrote that you “tried opening up to my friend”- you don’t mean to your boyfriend, do you?

In your two posts you wrote: “sometimes I feel there is mourning going on inside my heart and its actually painful… he didn’t love me the way I loved him… my heart felt like it was going to explode and I felt sick… I felt awful for 2 weeks… I felt rejected by him and so I cant seem to let go of the feeling of rejection… weird emotions …I never got closure.”

The feelings of rejection, of being unloved, these feelings, I believe, did not originate in that relationship but earlier, in your childhood. They only attach themselves to the image of this man in your dreams, thoughts, and in the wedding.

Often, to survive rejection, lack of love, in childhood, we detach, go numb, dissociate so we feel as little of those uncomfortable, scary feelings. Then in adulthood the feelings come up, demanding that “closure” you mentioned.

If you agree, what could this closure be?

anita

July 31, 2017 at 3:13 am #161200
Lucy
Participant
Dear Anita

i think that make so much sense. I haven’t told my current boyfriend no. My best friend is a man, and he was supporting me throughout this relationship and he doesn’t think too kindly of my ex.

I don’t really know what the closure is? Maybe just accepting that it’s ok to still care for people who have hurt you? Even if they aren’t sorry.

In my head I always imagined him saying sorry to me and it never came. It was almost as if he was enjoying the times he has ignored me or hurt me after we broke up. For a longtime he tried to get back together and mess with my emotions when I was trying to move on so maybe he feels too much shame to approach me, or none at all. I think this is probably all linked to how I processed what happened with my father. I think I felt I deserved a lot of stuff that happened in my first relationship and maybe this is purely about the rejection I have felt from men in my life.

now I have a man who is literally a gift from god! I don’t want to feel guilt over dreams and old emotions.
- This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by Lucy.
July 31, 2017 at 3:17 am #161204

Lucy
Participant

Thank you so much Elaina and Peter also! This has been extremely helpful.

Sending love to you all.

July 31, 2017 at 3:58 am #161210

Anonymous
Guest

Dear Lucy:

You wrote: “I don’t want to feel guilt over dreams and old emotions”- we are not guilty for our dreams or our emotions. These (dreams, emotions) happen in our brains without our choosing. We cannot possibly be guilty for what we do not choose. What we dream, what we feel, these are not a source of pride or shame, these are automatic mental events, they just happen.

Regarding closure, you wrote that maybe it is “just accepting that it’s ok to still care for people who have hurt you? Even if they aren’t sorry”- it is okay, again, to feel whatever it is that you feel. Over time, correcting our thinking where it is distorted/ incongruent with reality, will result with feeling differently.

When a person hurt you repeatedly and did not express regret, and you keep caring for that person, that means to me that you still have an expectation from that person. If you could make things you desire happen, what would you desire your ex to do or say to you?

anita
Author

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