Boyfriend or Ex

Dreaming about your boyfriend is usually about your emotional feelings, attachment to, or fears about the boyfriend. This includes the difficulties, struggles with feelings and sexuality felt in connection with boyfriend or other males. It might also be your insights into his behaviour. Please read Ages of Love

Boyfriend dreams often have an element either of fear or dreaming of possibilities. In other words the dream explores what you fear might happen in the relationship, and what you hope will happen. See Inner People 

Example: I constantly have a dream that me and my best friend/boyfriend of 3 years just suddenly aren’t together. I never know why, but I am either with another guy or simply alone and just have this horrible feeling in my stomach, and know it’s not right. In my dream I get upset my bf never called or contacted me after breaking up, and I never know why we ended either. The dream ends with me giving in and trying to find a way to call him but then I wake up. The obvious conclusion would be I think I belong with my bf, but is there anything else possibly?

This is a wonderful example of how the mind works, and the play between what we allow ourselves to think – our conscious mind – and what we do not allow ourselves to know – our unconscious. As an example of this here is another young woman’s dream.

Example: During my teens I was engaged to be married when I found a more attractive partner and was in considerable conflict. Consistently I dreamt I was at my fiancé’s funeral until it dawned on me the dream was telling me I wanted to be free of him. When I gave him up the dreams ceased. I don’t understand what this means, and its really bothering me. Why am I dreaming of this? Can you help me understand the meaning of these dreams?

Each person we spend time with, fall in love with, make love to or grow up with, or even with animals, we develop an incredible and often invisible bond. For instance many women and men write and ask why they keep dreaming of partners, parents of even old friends they have moved on from.  You keep dreaming about your ex from years ago or old friends because while you lived with them you experienced millions of memories, situations, conflict and learning experiences. So you carry them with you as memories, lessons learnt, love or anger still trying to find a way of being absorbed.

So in a way it is not your husband, ex or others you are dealing with but yourself – we dream about them and use them as a symbols of what we picked up from the relationship. We cannot have a mass of experience with someone and move away without it influencing us. Life is, in a very real way, a learning experience, and every new experience has to be fitted into what we are learning.

Cheated on: Many dreams of this are sent and here is an example:

Example: In my dream I’m with my ex girlfriend (who I still hang out with) we are hanging out being really close and lovey on each other. Then I leave the room for something and when I come back she is with a man. In this reoccurring dream she is always with a different guy and I don’t know who any of them are. When I walk in they are really close to each other and holding hands sometimes she is sitting on his lap. In my dream it always breaks my heart and I tell her how I feel and she acts like she doesn’t care. Then I wake up. In real life we were together for 2 years and I’m a girl. While we were together she cheated on me with men. We still hang out today but we are just friends with benefits.

This type of dream is usually from a young woman who either sees her boyfriend with another man or has powerful suspicions that he is seeing someone else. The dreamer is actually meeting her unresolved feelings of jealousy, of feeling not as good as the other person and not being lovable.

Ex-lover/boyfriend: This frequently shows any feelings or hopes still connected with him. The ex-boyfriend or lover often becomes a symbol for all the hopes for love that are not being satisfied at the moment, or in the present relationship. Sometimes it is a way of digesting or living in the past. It may occur in some dreams that the ex-lover is seen as a dead body, or a murder is involved. This is usually because we are killing, or have killed some of our longings and love for that person.

Example: Although married for almost nine years, I have been dreaming almost every night about an old friend. We used to date twelve years ago, but although we still meet occasionally, our relationship now is purely platonic.

About two weeks before I found out he was getting married I had a dream where he handed me a single red rose and said ‘I love you, but the time’s not right’. In the latest dream I was reading a paper with the heading ‘Broken Hearted Babies’, with a picture of both of us as babies, with our names underneath. Amanda – Teletext.

Obviously Amanda still has unfulfilled longing and dreams in regard to her ‘old friend’. Even so it is worth reading the things in the previous section.

Example: I dream I am in a room with my ex-boyfriend – Gary. I feel scared about having sex with him but want him to show me all the excitement and thrill of sex. I love him but can’t tell him how much I want the enjoyment of his body closer to mine. You are the first person I can write to telling about having sex with my ex-boyfriend. Donna – Lancs.

Relationships are complicated and here Donna is experiencing the conflict of wanting him yet being separated. Remember that dreams are like computer games I which you can be killed, make love a thousand times, and come away none the worse – unless of course you feel that what happened was exactly like waking life. Then you would have the sort of questions and dilemmas you are telling me about. See Dreams Like a Computer Game; Dreams are a reflection of your inner world.

Daughter’s boyfriend: This may illustrate your judgements and feelings about the boyfriend.

Male dreaming of boyfriend: Usually this is about the qualities of weaknesses you witness in your friend. See the entry on Characters and People in Dreams to understand this. It can also be about the reasons you have become friends, and the intricacies of the relationship.

Useful Questions and Hints:

If this is about a past love, what do I honestly now feel about him and why?

Do the events in the dream show what I fear – and if so can I honestly see them as fears, not reality?

What relationship situation does the dream depict, and how does this comment on waking life?

See Growing Up to LovePeople Animals and Objects of our Dreams are Projections

Comments

-shelby 2011-05-31 1:13:30

im at a gas station with two boys that im totally NOT intrested in,and then my boyfriends ex girlfriend shows up with her friends about to got to a party looking beautiful,she goes to the bathroom then my boyfriend shows up and i talk him into leaving because i dont want him to see the guys im with or his ex because im scared if he sees her he will miss her,but he does run into her and trys to leave with her and her friends and runs away from me as i stand there asking him why he is going with her,and he says got to go bye,talk to you later as he runs off to her car..whats does this mean?! please helppppp,i have dreams that he leave me for his ex all the time,just in diffrent ways

    -Tony Crisp 2011-06-07 11:21:46

    Shelby – You are feeling so unlovable that you keep creating these dreams in which you live out your fears that nobody loves you. I know that love is uncertain, but it doesn’t help to beat yourself up in your dreams.

    Even if somebody leaves you, it doesn’t mean you are unlovable. See Beware of Love – http://dreamhawk.com/relationship-sex/beware-of-love/

    Fear is an awful master, so if you can climb out of it. The following video might help. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYYXq1Ox4sk

    Tony

-Neena 2011-05-22 1:36:09

I have these dreams that my ex and I are getiing back together and that we are driving away and he is holding my hands usually. Now the other night I dreamt he was wearing sunglasses I couldn’t see his eyes and he was holding another woman’s hands and walking with 2 other couples. Then I ran behind him into an elementary school class room ( wierd. On my way running to the class room where he was his brother crossed path with me and tried to stop me. He ( my ex) was there alone and I attacked him. Like I was punching him in his face because I was so mad with him. Nonetheless he began to run so I picked up a clothes hanger and tried to run behind him to further injure him. Then I woke up crying because I was soo hurt. His face was not clear in this dream, also his brother’s face was a bit dofferent. I wonder if this is reality or is my mind playing games.

    -Tony Crisp 2011-06-02 7:59:49

    Neena – There are all sorts of issues in your dream. In the first place you are still emotionally involved with your ex in way that is still expressing childlike emotions – the elementary school classroom. I wonder what memories you carry from there that are still relevant to today?

    Then the desire to hurt him is probably dating from a time when your father didn’t love you and you felt deserted by him. I know you may not remember that, but the fact is we learn to love from our parents, and the childlike you is still hung up there somehow. Also, having learnt whatever it was in our early years about love, we cannot help to use it again on who ever we choose to practice our love on; thus your rage at your ex.

    I would suggest expressing the rage with the help of a big cushion or couch you can whack and express your anger on. Use a rolled up newspaper or tennis racket, something you can get satisfaction out to. But if you do this you must not think is a way of hitting your ex, but a way of allowing anger to be released harmlessly. Also see http://dreamhawk.com/relationship-sex/beware-of-love/

    Tony

-doca 2011-05-17 4:57:11

about 2 months ago I had a dream about my ex-boyfriend (we “were on a break from our 4yrs relationship” a few days before tha dream). In my dream I went to his place and everything there seemed changed from the last time I’ve been there and I found in his bed another woman. When talking to him, on the phone first and then face to face I asked for explanations. He first didn’t say anything, his mother called and said that he can move if he doesn’t want me to know where he is anymore, but in the end he hang up on her and told me “OK, but this time you’ll have to move in with me forever”. At that point the woman in his bed dissappeared.
The weird thing is that about a month after this dream I really went to his place and things were indeed completely changed, in his bed were the clothes another woman wore over night, and he had indeed a new relationship with a woman similar to the one in my dream. After that his mother intervened, not quite as in my dream, but similar.

My problem is if this dream was indeed a sort of “premonition”. Partly it was, as I saw it myself, but my question is if the ending, him saying we’ll get back together if I move in, will also be real?
I don’t actually know if I want it to be real or not. but it’s the very first time a dream I have actually comes true, at least partly, till now.
Please give me your opinion since this is really difficult for me to understand.

    -Tony Crisp 2011-05-26 9:17:43

    Doca – I have been personally involved in dreams that were premonitions. Some of them were proved right in every detail. The others, as with yours were only partly right.

    I believe there are several possible reason for this. Firstly at the time of a dream people involved were operating from particular attitudes and motives. These can change and so the future we create from those attitudes and motives will change.

    Another reason is that we ourselves create a dream out of our own feelings, prejudices, fears and thinking. So that may influence the outcome of your dream. The only way you could be clear about it is to enter your unconscious and see where the different parts of the dream emerged from. That is possible but takes training.

    Something that I feel is relevant is that dreams, even prophetic ones, are simply information. They should be weighed and evaluated like any other information. I have an impression of you as a clear headed and clear sighted individual. And some premonitions are actually the result of such clear sightedness. So I would suggests you gather any other information you have and weigh it all and make your own decisions.

    Tony

-aud 2011-05-16 3:18:09

i had this dream about an ex bf it was really weird it was as if its years ahead of now. we are holding hands and telling his ex the mother of his child that we are getting married…what the hell does this mean? i have no attachment to him …it just weirded me out and some sort of thoughtful insight would be most helpful

-Leanne 2011-05-14 11:19:49

Hi, Im writing because I want to know what this dream meant… I dont remember all of the details. But I had a dream that my boyfriend of 3 years, and the father of my daughter was cheating on me. I had came home one night and there was a girl at our house with him. When I came in they were comming down the steps from up stairs (The house didnt look like ours at all). I assumed they were in our room. I started crying and yelling at him “If your not happy with me just tell me the truth, y are you doing this to me” Then the girl that was there said something and her and I started fighting. I was on top of her hitting her in the face. I felt like I was using all my strenght to hit her but it wasnt hard at all. Then when she left. He tried saying to me that she was just his friend and that she had to use the bathroom so he was showing her where it was at. That he can have friends. But I tried to explain to him that thats not fair to me and how would he feel if I brought some guy home and when he walked in we were walking down the steps together… That was it.

    -Tony Crisp 2011-05-20 10:12:01

    Leanne – I wonder whether you wondered about your boyfriend’s fidelity before the dream. Because the dream seems to me typical of many others I have seen where the dreamers are unsure whether they are loved, and so have horrific dreams. This could be the case if you do feel you are not loved, or are unsure because your parents were not expressive of love and so you are left with uncertainty. Love is so important to us, and if we do not feel it then it is like going without food, the hunger for it builds up. Then we have dreams such as yours mirroring what we feel.

    Possibly the greatest fear, one that can trigger great anger, or an enormous desire to placate or earn love, is the threat or fear of being abandoned. Many so called adult relationships have actually not matured beyond this stage of childhood love. The threatened loss of a partner results in enormous emotional pain, anger, attempts to placate or regain the loved one, and feelings of personal worthlessness – I’m not good and unwanted – can haunt the partner. See http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/growing-up-to-love/

    In dream terms the woman you were hitting was you – that was the frustration and pain you felt.

    Tony

-Erika Leon 2011-05-04 20:02:59

I keep having almost the same dream, not always the same girl but same situation. I have this dream my boyfriend talks to me like he loves me and there is another women in the room with us and she smiles at me. then I grab a drink and Im the one who is crying and it’s like nothing is wrong, I tell him we have to talk, then as I leave the room he sits next to her and holds her hand. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING????

-Sarah 2011-04-22 18:55:59

I am at wits end with dreams about an “ex” I dated 4 months ago for 5 months. It was long distance (by an hour) and I saw him mostly on weekends when i’d bring my kids there. It was supposed to be casual but he lured me in and it turned “I love you” pretty fast. I did have feelings for him and he just stopped talking to me one day and got a new girlfriend.I am back with my kids dad (which is great)..but my ex is in my dreams every night since we first got together! most the time hes just there in the dream and we never talk. Or me and my new boyfriend are in my ex’s town hanging out and i spot my ex from the across the room. I get tired of seeing him when I’m trying to get past what happened and how it did hurt me. Is it because I never got closure? I never talked to him or said anything..how do I deal with this and get him away from my dreams!

    -Tony Crisp 2011-04-29 12:29:34

    Sarah – It is possible that this links with a time when you were abandoned as a child. I say this because such powerful feelings have roots in something that was from the past, in fact from childhood.

    Also in your dreams about him, he is not in your dreams. He represents what you learnt of experienced in relation to him. Being abandoned in other words.

    I would suggest thinking back through your life when you felt stuck like this. Or having a straight conversation with the dream him. For a start you could say to him, “What the hell are you doing in my dreams and driving me crazy?” And then of course wait to see what the reply is and continue until you feel satisfied – all in your imagination of course.

    Tony

-char 2011-03-15 11:20:42

dear dreamhawk.

my boyfriend of ten months jsut went away on a ytip. and the past couple fo nights ive had dreams about his bestfriends. normally hugging me saying i miss you or i love you what can that mean?

    -Tony Crisp 2011-03-21 10:44:52

    Char – It depends upon what you see as his best friends. What I mean is that if I dreamt of my son Neal, it wouldn’t help to think this is about him. The only way I could understand it is to look at what I feel about him, or what qualities or failings I see he has. It is those things you need to use to understand your dream.

    For instance I dreamt that I was in a big stream with Mark and Neal. It was a fairly strong current and the boys were getting hurt. I told them that whatever one does or things directs the current. It was like karma. Everything done influenced the current, and so one must be very careful of every action, or else it rebounds and causes injury.

    When I explored my feelings about Neal it showed he represented the problems I am dealing with in dealing with such a powerful flow of change in my life. The wrong attitude could throw me down.

    So you need to sense what your friend’s friends mean to you. I would guess that they mean an easy going love without complications.

    Tony

      -gabriela 2011-04-01 9:06:34

      I keep have dreams of my boyfriend for the past week everyday straight something bad always happens between us but in the end we get back together and were super happy and were like in love

        -Tony Crisp 2011-04-07 14:33:37

        Gabriela – You probably haven’t yet got the courage to openly find fault with your boyfriend. So instead you are sorted out difficulties in your dreams. Obviously it works because such conflicts often lead to closer loving.

        Tony

-Michelle 2011-03-03 11:29:03

Please could you help me with this dream?

I have been married almost three years and the other night I had a dream about being on the phone to my ex ( we did enjoy our phone conversations).but I was being careful because i didn’t want my husband to know. Then the ex turns up at our house and threatens to show my husband he is there. I am terrified because my husband knows that the only way he could get to our house would be if I told him and I’d have to explain.

The ex toys with me and I dont know what to do. When my husband sees him he greets him like a child rubbing the back of his neck. I say “Do you know who this is?”

When I tell him he is distraught and leaves in a taxi (leaves his car on the drive). The family we had around leave too. I run after him but he goes and I tell the ex to leave.

All of a sudden my husband comes back with the keys to his car in his hand and my ex comes in with him. My husband says, Someone took my car and your ex helped me catch them. And they start to be cool with each other.

Me and this ex split on bad terms 7 years ago. Me and my husband have had arguments about the ex in years past but they have never met. I am well over him now.

-Kaitlyn 2011-02-16 16:18:25

I had a dream lastnight that my boyfriend and I were at some kind of get together with everyone we knew in our town and he went to take a picture with a few people an then he was gone and i couldnt find him i searched everywhere and asked everyone if thery saw him and he was nowhere to be found, I woke up still not knowing where he went, i dont understand what this dream means and i would like to.

    -Tony Crisp 2011-02-23 13:01:10

    Kaitlyn – I take it you are fairly young, and this is an unusual dream to have. This type of lost person dream occurs in wives in later years. Here is an example of such dreams.

    My husband and I go out somewhere together, mostly in a town or built up area. After a while I lose him, and even though we arrange to meet at a certain place, he’s never there when I arrive. I’m looking everywhere and desperately asking passers by if they have seen him. The sense of loss and panic is awful and people keep saying “Yes, he is over there, or went that way.” I never find him.

    Such dreams are about a fear the woman has that her husband is going to die. This is because they know men usually die before their wives. But in your case this doesn’t seem to apply, but it is about a fear you have that he can simply walk off and you will never see him again. And this is a fear, not a prediction.

    Tony

-Vanessa 2011-01-29 11:00:34

i keep having these dreams where my ex partner hates me and wont go to pick my child up, in 2 of them my mother has been present in the dreams and in another my ex partner was with another woman, sometimes in my dreams i feel scared, upset, angry like i just want to run away and hide and in my dreams my child has been present. what does this all mean??

    -Tony Crisp 2011-02-04 12:19:21

    Vanessa – Behind all the dream events lies your anger that your partner does not love you, and in fact is looking at another woman.

    These feelings are as old as when a woman first wanted her man to love her and be with her as she raised her children. Why that is so painful and a struggle is another question. And I think it goes back to how we are raised, and what values morally and socially we absorb.

    For instance in earlier Eskimo families there was no jealousy or difficult feelings about different partners. In our culture it is seen as normal to feel in pain about such things, and the same with death – normal to feel loss and pain. I know myself how I was driven crazy with pain about such things until one day I had a dream. When I explored that dream – not interpreted it but felt the emotions behind the symbols – it lead to an experience of wonderful freedom. I saw that what were causing the pain were all the cultural beliefs I had absorbed. I had the actual experience of freedom. It lasted for three days, and then I had to do the hard work of facing the beliefs and undoing them from me. This consisted of saying to them each time they surfaced, “This is all lies, and I know from experience they are untruths, for I have experienced freedom from them.”

    You have to understand that I had years of such misery, and had sought the cause in early traumatic events. So it was amazing to find freedom.

    I would recommend a little book to read that might help you to have a different view of life and its meaning. It is called Looking Beyond by James van Praagh.

    Tony

-Izzy 2010-12-17 11:44:46

i had a dream recently that my boyfriend walked another girl home instead of staying with me and didnt care, this hugely upset me and then something was chasing me and i was just crying out for my boyfriend to help me alot!! really sad

-Katrina 2010-12-13 13:32:31

I keep having dreams about my ex-boyfriend from two years ago. Everytime that I see him in my dream, I can always think to myself, “I am with my current boyfriend. Why is he in this dream?” And I’m always like indirectly talking to my boyfriend. Sometimes, my ex, to me, is my current boyfriend, but when i look at him a second time, it’s my ex. This has been happening more often now, and it’s quite annoying. I have no feelings or any kind of relationship with my ex, but he wont get out of my dreams!

    -Tony Crisp 2010-12-23 10:55:12

    Katrina – I have to guess that there is something your ex had that you miss. If that is so you need to look back to your ex and see what it was he gave you, and if you can get it in your present relationship. Don’t forget that in your dreams the ex is an expression of your feelings, and what is it you will hanker after.

    Tony

-tanya 2010-11-16 13:40:16

I had this dream my boyfriend told me he was leaving to go to Florida for work adn that he had to go. I begged and cried for him not to and i was so scared that it was over and he was going to find someone else. waht could this mean? we’ve been together 5 years.

    -Tony Crisp 2010-11-25 10:56:44

    Tanya – This is such a common dream, and what it means is that you are terrified the man you love no longer loves you and is leaving you. Those are your feelings not his.

    It also means that you are still stuck in this awful feeling that love means pain and misery, and that dates from our childhood when we were completely dependent for love from our parents. That depth of feeling was caused by millions of years from our past when to lose our parents love meant either death or desertion. To understand the enormity of this you need to read http://dreamhawk.com/pregnancy-childbirth/autobiography-of-a-premature-baby/#I love you

    Also you need to understand that our culture hasn’t emotionally matured beyond a baby level, and we need to acknowledge that. So do not think that your boy friend is leaving you, but do think that this misery can carry on until you grow up emotionally. For help with this see http://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/growing-up-to-love/

    Tony

-nikki 2010-10-14 16:09:04

i keep having these dreams of me and this guy im seeing not the same dream but the same thing happens…….we end up fighting? we have only been together for about 2 months and haven’t fought yet. what does this mean?

    -Tony Crisp 2010-10-19 12:31:52

    Nikki – It could mean several things. For instance if you have never got on with your father it might mean you have lot of anger you need to release towardmmen. When we get together with a partner we tend to hit them with everything we needed to have worked out with our parents.

    It could also mean that there is something you feel but have not discovered about the relationship. I suppose it might help if you know what you are arguing about. Is there a similar theme each time?

    Tony

Copyright © 1999-2010 Tony Crisp | All rights reserved