Dreaming of my ex - what does it mean?

[Shinrahunter]

I just found this forum after googling about a dream I had and it looks like the place to finally get some answers.

I'm a 29 year old guy and I've been a very loving and committed relationship with my girlfriend for nearly 7 years now.She is 5 years younger than me and is everything my ex wasn't. I would do anything for her and have even emigrated to Canada to stay with her.
I was with my ex for 6 years, having met on holiday when I was 15 and she was 14.
It was aturbulent relationship and initially only lasted 3 months, I lived in Manchester and she lived in Hull and given our ages it was difficult to see eachother.
She broke it off with me in the October and then suddenly contacted me at Xmas that year and we started talking on the phone.
She came to visit me in the June and we hit it off again and got back together which meant she had to break up with her current boyfriend back home.

Our relationship was a stressed one as later that year I joined the forces and she went to college & later university.
There were trust issues on both sides and we split up a couple of times for a month here and there.
She cheated on me with someone and it broke my heart, I stayed with her but it was never the same again.

I loved her with all my heart but at the same time I hated her violently for betraying me, a few years later around Xmas 2003 she was being very cold and distant with me, very much like she was when she cheated, and I decided that enough was enough and that the relationship wasn't healthy for me. I cheated on her numerous times in the last month but never told her and we parted ways on New Years eve.

Flash forward 3 months and she asked me to meet her in Leeds, we met up and chatted, she told me she was with someone else and had been since New year and that she was pregnant.
She said it was his although from doing the maths it was evident it could have been mine.
I was, again, heartbroken and I told her that I loved her and would even raise the child with her, she told me she wished it was mine, kissed me and then boarded her train home.

3 Months later I met Rachel in a training group at work, we hit it off great as friends and soon started a relationship, it was a bit rocky at first but we 'get' eachother so well and in the 7 years we've been together we've barely been apart. We don't have kids yet but we are planning a wedding for January 2013.

My ex's child died of SIDS and since then she got married & had two more kids so far. We have talked on Facebook in the past but my feelings toward her are very different now, I still dislike her as a person and as such deleted her from my friends list 2 or more years ago.
She's still friends with my mum & step-dad and even visits them with her kids every so often.

I have had numerous dreams in which my ex is present and we are usually in a relationship or starting one together but I am also in a relationship with my girlfriend in these dreams and I always have to choose between them.
The locations & situations always change and although in these dreams I have very strong feelings for my ex, I always choose Rachel over her in the end.

I am wondering if anyone can give me an explanation as for the reasons for these dreams and what they mean.
At first I felt guilty but over the years I usually wake up happy and snuggle up to my girlfriend knowing that I always make the right choice.

(Sorry for the massive post)

[iatethewholewheel]

When I have an issue at hand or past emotions I need to heal (whether I am conscious of it or not), I find a lot of times I have dreams that seem to be releasing. I think the subconscious is excellent at sorting out and resolving unfinished odds and ends that you can't necessarily work out in the waking life, or may not be aware are still affecting you on some level in waking life.

When I am actively working to heal myself, I now ask before bedtime for more "therapy" in my dreams. I have had some surprisingly positive results and interesting dreams that leave me with a cathartic feeling upon waking (or sometimes the opposite, I will wake up experiencing unpleasant emotion, but I think this is important for releasing and I do then feel better).

So it sounds to me like there are still issues from the relationship that affect you, whether on a conscious level or not, and your dreams are trying to sort them out or bring them up. If you reflect on your dreams, maybe you can pinpoint a specific element or message that resonates with you, and work to identify and resolve it. You can also then set the intention for further healing and releasing on the issue before you go to sleep.

If you met your current GF just 3 months later after such a long and emotionally-trying relationship, I would say it is next to impossible that you fully healed from your previous relationship, rather buried all the conflict and emotions, and still have things you could benefit from exploring, releasing, and healing.

You may find that from doing such, the already great relationship you have with your current girlfriend blossoms even further

[Billy]

When we love some one deeply there are threads that join our heart chakras together, its very common to be able to finish each others sentences etc to be in synchronicity. My last relationship was very like that and I could always read her moods no matter what the distance. IF you are no longer in love with her then its very likely to me that she is thinking about you and these threads are as yet uncut enabling her to influence your dreams, thinking. Its a very strong possibility in my experience.

[HeartNotes]

Ah, yes, I had this happen to me. I called him up and told him to stop messing with me and "walking" in my dreams. He whined that he had no other way to "reach" me and I told him that it was an incredibly horrible personal violation of my privacy and that when I was dreaming, I couldn't separate his subjective reality from my own and had rationalized it as my own longing and grief for him when I hadn't missed him in three months!

I should note that he left me, I didn't leave him and I had a lot of unreconciled anger and other emotions, because I was in the hospital at the time and had no idea anything had happened until I got back home. He was the first person that I had ever loved, and I knew him for 12 years out of 25. In short, knowing him shaped my personality, for better or for worse.

Anyway, long story short, the vivid and out-of-character dreams faded and instead, if I did dream of him, he was only ever playing a role in a dream, it never felt like a face-to-face meeting again and that's a lot easier to cope with. We tend to turn the people that we know or have known into archetypes with unstructured dreams. If you do a lot of lucid dreaming, you'll have the occasional "run-in" not with a dream figure but with the person's dream entity. I'm not an expert, so I'm sure someone else can put it better than me but it doesn't feel like a character. The rest of your dream could be fuzzy, but that one figure really stood up on the stage, so to speak, and looked at you with clear eyes.

If it's someone like a sibling or lover or parents, they think it's really normal to dream about you and think nothing of it. Both positive and negative emotions seem to draw dreams, and frequently when I say, "I had a nightmare last night. A really vivid one" my mother will immediately follow with, "I did too." And then the "What was yours about?" will start to sound familiar...

[Midniteshowers]

If you are dreaming about your ex, it probably means that you are still thinking about that person, at least on a subconscious level. A good thing to remember, before you go too far and start tracking this person down, because he/ she is on your mind, that ex's are ex's for a reason, and just because they are in the back of your mind and your dreaming about them, dosent necessarily mean that its time to find them and have another go at it. It also dosent mean that there gonna die, or anything stupid like that. In my opinion, leave it be.

[Billy]

Originally Posted by HeartNotes

Ah, yes, I had this happen to me. I called him up and told him to stop messing with me and "walking" in my dreams. He whined that he had no other way to "reach" me and I told him that it was an incredibly horrible personal violation of my privacy and that when I was dreaming, I couldn't separate his subjective reality from my own and had rationalized it as my own longing and grief for him when I hadn't missed him in three months!

I should note that he left me, I didn't leave him and I had a lot of unreconciled anger and other emotions, because I was in the hospital at the time and had no idea anything had happened until I got back home. He was the first person that I had ever loved, and I knew him for 12 years out of 25. In short, knowing him shaped my personality, for better or for worse.

Anyway, long story short, the vivid and out-of-character dreams faded and instead, if I did dream of him, he was only ever playing a role in a dream, it never felt like a face-to-face meeting again and that's a lot easier to cope with. We tend to turn the people that we know or have known into archetypes with unstructured dreams. If you do a lot of lucid dreaming, you'll have the occasional "run-in" not with a dream figure but with the person's dream entity. I'm not an expert, so I'm sure someone else can put it better than me but it doesn't feel like a character..

You have good skills I can see, most people would rationalize the prescence of another in their dreams as their own subconcious I know because i;ve seen it time and again, most people just dont want to believe its possible for others to influence their thoughts. In psychology this is known as normalcy bias, because for the ego to admit that would be a potential disaster for it. But as you said it doesn't feel like a blank character in your dream and when you look at others that are truly present in a dream they look and act more real than the usual dream players.

[Minerva]

I don't know 100% sure, but when I asked my subconscious to tap into my ex's subconscious and tell me the energies around him and within his mind, my subconscious said it couldn't do it-- that it doesn't have that ability to do that. I always thought that the collective unconscious meant that we are connected subconsciously and can go into other thoughts through the subconscious, but I learned that is an incorrect way of looking at the collective unconscious.

My subconscious though revealed to me what it knew from my spirit guides and higher self since they can do it! But it admitted to me it itself doesn't have that ability to transcend time and space like they can on their plane. Instead, it revealed to me that it will be with me and help me to the best that it can since it is part of me and uses what it knows from the experiences it shares with me.

I hope this helps because I definitely tried doing something like that.

[Billy]

Originally Posted by Minerva

I don't know 100% sure, but when I asked my subconscious to tap into my ex's subconscious and tell me the energies around him and within his mind, my subconscious said it couldn't do it-- that it doesn't have that ability to do that. I always thought that the collective unconscious meant that we are connected subconsciously and can go into other thoughts through the subconscious, but I learned that is an incorrect way of looking at the collective unconscious.

My subconscious though revealed to me what it knew from my spirit guides and higher self since they can do it! But it admitted to me it itself doesn't have that ability to transcend time and space like they can on their plane. Instead, it revealed to me that it will be with me and help me to the best that it can since it is part of me and uses what it knows from the experiences it shares with me.

I hope this helps because I definitely tried doing something like that.

That type of intuition comes from the heart not the mind. The mind over analizes the input. These things are felt not processed by a mind that has a lifetime of subjective thought.

[beltor]

@Shinrahunter I think you should ask your heart clearly what does it want. For it appears somewhere within your heart you still have some attachments left with your Ex.

[nube]

I think it sounds like she represents your past, maybe in general, that you need to find a way to let go of, and completely focus on your present. And really forgive and forget. Maybe some kind of therapy could help? I had the same issue with my ex, dreaming about meeting him and talking almost every night for 3 years. When I was able to forgive him, really forgive him, I was able to move on and then we actually got to talk it all out too and now I only feel compassion towards him and I never have these dreams anymore.
Good luck to you and I am glad you have found a good woman now
Btw heartnotes the way you describe the dream entity, is exactly how I would descibe it too : The rest of your dream could be fuzzy, but that one figure really stood up on the stage, so to speak, and looked at you with clear eyes weird when it happens, but I always take these messages and encounters seriously and often they are so spot-on they are scary. Once I met a guy like this in a dream, we had only met once, and had not seen eachother for half a year and had no contact, and in the dream he said "see you in two weeks", and two weeks later at a party a guy came over to me, asked "do you remember me?" and it was him.

[nube]

btw I keep having dreams now about another ex, I go different places to lectures etc and he clings to me and cuddles me and it makes me really embarassed, and he also does it in front of his new girlfriend and calls her my name. I also dreamt that he gave my best friend a letter to me about "tears in flowerbeds". In real life he is trying to reach me, he texts me a bit but because of our past I only reply short and polite when I feel I have to. Could this be him "hacking" my dreams? I know he did another time, many years ago, where I got a very clear message from him through a dream, and he also know that that dream was why I took up contact with him the last time we didn`t speak.

[Minerva]

Originally Posted by Billy

That type of intuition comes from the heart not the mind. The mind over analizes the input. These things are felt not processed by a mind that has a lifetime of subjective thought.

Ah, feeling it. I get what you are saying. Thank you!
*wonders now* Yeah, for my subconscious, I didn't ~feel~ it with those dreams. It was an analytical approach or point of view. But there was one time I heard a voice at the end of a dream and it was very distinct and I did feel that. I think I get the difference. Thank you Billy!!

[nube]

I found this thread really insightful : http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/p...years-ago.html