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¡Hola Papi!
I'm a lesbian woman who thought I was bisexual until fairly recently. The last man I ever dated was a guy we'll call Michael. Our relationship got very serious very quickly, and we moved in together after dating for less than a year.
One day, he came home and told me he’d been thinking about breaking up for several months. I was completely blindsided, which cemented his desire to end things, and it's been several years since our relationship ended.
When I was ready to start dating again after we broke up, I realized that I never wanted to date men again and that I was a lesbian. I've had a variety of short to medium-term relationships with women that have ended for normal reasons of incompatibility: lack of chemistry, avoiding verbal abuse, all the good reasons you'd want to cut a relationship short. My therapist is proud of me!
But during this time, I've been plagued by dreams about Michael. The dreams happen at random intervals. I might not think about him for three months and then have dreams about him two or three times in a single week. In every dream, I'm happily shocked that we're back together and we have the same crackling sexual chemistry that we did for the duration of our relationship.
Papi, I'm tormented by these dreams. I know from years of processing that my relationship with Michael was unhealthy and we weren't right for each other. I know that I'm a lesbian, and I know that even if Michael threw himself at my feet tomorrow, I wouldn't take him back. But I also haven't had chemistry like what we had with any of the women I've dated since. Why can't I stop dreaming about Michael and let this guy go? And why can't I stop comparing the chemistry I had with him to the chemistry I (don't) have with the women I date?
Signed,
Bad Dreamer
Hey there, BD!
Wonderful timing. I’ve been having similar dreams about a guy I dated many years ago. It’s interesting, isn’t it, what our brains are capable of conjuring up? It’s sort of like, You are literally one of my body parts. Why are you issuing me riddles?
Dreams are made of slippery stuff. I’ve had many a nightmare where I’m trying to run away, but the ground beneath my feet is suddenly uncooperative. There’s nothing solid, nothing concrete to hold onto. Few of them make it into our conscious thoughts in the morning (most slip between our fingers and swim away), and even in broad daylight they prove difficult to understand, their anatomy at once familiar but with strange, ridiculous twists—a kind uncle hunts us down in a house we don’t recognize, a childhood friend calmly directs us to hide from the aliens in a Pizza Hut.
What I’m getting at here is it will be difficult to discuss dreams without engaging in a bit of woo. I am neither a sleep scientist nor, contrary to a nasty rumor, a psychic. I actually have never overheard this rumor, but I just know it exists. Somehow.
Let’s start, BD, by separating your ex, Michael, the person, from Michael, a figure in your dreams. Not to go all Dream Dictionary on you, but dreams operate in symbols. Even in our waking thoughts, real life people can be like this, no? They can look and sound an awful lot like their corporeal counterparts, but in fact they are mere costumes for anxieties, desires, and other subterranean sentiments.