What Does It Mean to Dream of Your Ex?
Whether your breakup was recent or you have not talked to your ex in 20 years, your former partner can make an appearance in your dreams.
Even if you shouted, “It’s all about you, isn’t it?” in the heat of your breakup, the dream of your ex actually might not be all about your ex.
Ex Dream Summary
Ex Dream Symbolism
Dreaming of your ex can symbolize a broader desire to get in touch with your own past. Maybe the dream is not about your ex specifically but about something else that was a big part of your life at the time you were in that relationship, especially if the relationship was not recent.
Dreaming of your ex can also look toward the future. If you are considering or have just started a new relationship, dreaming of your ex can help you figure out how to learn from the past and do better going forward.
Finally, dreaming of your ex can symbolize that some other situation in your life is currently triggering difficult emotions similar to what you felt surrounding your ex and your breakup. This could include feelings of failure or feelings that the world is unfair, depending on who you think is to blame.
Common Dreams of Your Ex
- Dream of getting back together with your ex
- Dream of having sex with your ex
- Dream of being rejected by your ex
Ex Dream Symbolism
Your Past
Dreaming of your ex, especially if a lot of time has elapsed since you were in a relationship with this person, could symbolize a link to your own past. Whatever else you were doing during the time you were dating that person could be up for review.
For example, dreaming of someone you dated in high school or college could symbolize a desire to connect with other things that were important to you in high school or college. If you are quite a bit older than that now, dreaming of your high school or college ex could symbolize that you feel the sort of potential and optimism about the future you had when you were young.
If a high school or college was an uncomfortable time for you, dreaming of your ex from high school or college could instead symbolize that some situation in your current life has brought up the same awkwardness you felt when you were young.
New Relationships
If you are in a place in your life where you are considering or recently started a new relationship, you might dream of an ex who was also once a shiny new presence in your life. You might be comparing your new partner to your ex to see whether your new partner has the same flaws – or the same attractive qualities – that your ex did.
Starting a new relationship might also bring your ex into your dreams if you are worried about repeating the same mistakes that you made in your relationship with your ex.
Blame
A big factor in some breakups is blame. A lot of time can be spent trying to sort out who was responsible for all of the problems in the relationship and who was the “bad guy” in the breakup.
Dreaming of your ex, especially one with whom you had a breakup that got drawn out due to issues involving blame, could symbolize some other situation in your life where you are trying to figure out who is the guilty party in a conflict.
Common Dreams of Your Ex
Dream of Getting Back Together with Your Ex
In interpreting a dream of getting back together with your ex, it is necessary to consider how recent the breakup in question was. If the breakup was recent, the dream might simply be processing that the breakup happened as you adjust to the shock of no longer being in a relationship with this person.
It is also necessary to consider whether you have any desire to get back together with your ex in waking life. If you want to get back together with your ex, dreaming of getting back together with your ex may simply be a wish-fulfillment dream. Most exes are exes for a reason, but occasionally it works out.
If you don’t want to get back together with your ex, dreaming of getting back together with your ex may represent that you miss other things that were part of your relationship. Maybe you don’t miss them, but you miss the house you lived in with them, or you miss the friends you had as a couple who took their side after the breakup.
If you dream of getting back together with an ex from a long time ago whom you have definitely moved on from, the dream may be more about reuniting with your own past. For instance, if you are old enough that your children are now attending high school, and you dream of your own long-forgotten high school ex, watching your children go through that phase of life may be triggering your memories of your youth.
Dream of Having Sex with Your Ex
The interpretation of a dream of having sex with your ex can vary based on the context.
If you enjoyed sex with your ex during the relationship, and the sex in the dream was enjoyable too, this could symbolize that you are capable of finding pleasure and connection in life. Even if that particular ex was not the right match for you overall, you have at least learned enough from that relationship to have the potential for success in the future.
If you have a new partner who is jealous about you having an enjoyable dream of sex with your ex, they should be reminded that generally you don’t have control over the content of your dreams. For this reason, you shouldn’t feel guilty about such a dream, either.
A dream like this does not necessarily mean that you want to dump your current partner and get back together with your ex. If you are generally happy with your current partner, such a dream could just mean that, of all the positive and negative experiences in your life’s stash of memories, the positive ones are getting triggered now – and your current partner should see that as a compliment.
If your ex was abusive, and the sexual encounter in your dream was correspondingly unpleasant, you could still be processing the relationship and its breakup, especially if these events happened recently.
If your abusive relationship with your ex was some time ago, and you otherwise don’t think about it often, your dream of being intimate with your ex could symbolize that a more recent situation in your life has brought up the same negative emotions that your ex provoked sexually or otherwise. If you have bad vibes about a new person in your life, a dream of this sort could be a warning that the bad vibes are warranted.
Dream of Being Rejected by Your Ex
If you dream of being rejected by your ex, of having some interaction with them where they make it clear that they don’t want you around, the good news is that this could have been provoked by the promising start of a new relationship with someone else. Especially if you know that you made mistakes in your relationship with your ex, starting a new relationship with someone else could trigger anxiety that you might repeat those same mistakes in your new relationship.
The longer the ex in question has been out of the picture, the less likely such a dream is really about them personally. Your dream might have been provoked by a more recent feeling of rejection in any context – even one totally unrelated to romance, like work or family.
Another factor relevant to interpreting a dream of being rejected by your ex could be how much you feel that you deserve to be rejected by that person. If you know that you really messed up in your relationship with them, even if this was something you came to see about the relationship after the fact rather than while you were in it, the dream could symbolize any other situation in your life where you feel you have failed. You could feel defined by all of the mistakes you have made and unable to escape them.
If you feel that the ex in question rejected you in a way that was not fair to you, though, dreaming of your ex rejecting you could symbolize any other situation, romantic or not, where you feel that you feel that you are being treated unfairly. You might feel like the world is against you no matter what you do.
Conclusion
Whether or not you enjoyed your encounter with your ex in your dream, dreaming of your ex more likely has to do with who you are today. Your ex may no longer be part of your waking life, but everyone you have ever known becomes part of a vast library of characters your dreams have for portraying your internal conflicts, and your ex is no exception.