I have a recurring dream about cursing out my cheating ex-boyfriend. Ideas?

Eh, give it time, they’ll go away. Don’t focus on them when you’re awake and don’t focus on the dreams. Go about your business. :)

In that case, you’re probably using the dreams to satisfy you need to confront him. Either talk to him civilly in real life, or just take the happiness you get from cursing him out and move on.

oh, i forgot to mention this, the one thing that i relish about the dreams, is that i often have that dream-thing where i try to talk but nothing comes out, and if i try really hard, i’ll actually make a sound and wake myself up. but no, with these dreams, i shout, and i curse, and i think it’s real. it’s actually kind of satisfying in a perverse way… and then in the morning i wake up and realize it wasn’t real.

asmonet, you’re quick!

I think it’s a good outlet to resolve issues with people that you probably
don’t actually want to see in real life. You get the perk of cussing him out
without the trouble of actually seeing him.

Win-win.
Unless, of course, you’d much prefer to cuss him out in real life.

nimis, i really would!!! yes!

…but people keep telling me it’s a bad idea, that i’ll regret it later, and being in a state of utter wrathfulness, anger of a thousand suns, etc, i listened because i thought maybe i wasn’t in the best place to make a rational decision…so i resolved not to talk to him at all…

@chica: the thing about trying to talk and nothing comes out… do you also get experiences in dreams where you’re trying to run away from danger and you can’t move, and when you do it’s in slow motion? Or when you’re trying to tell someone off in a dream and your mouth moves in slow motion and everything sounds like you’ve got a mouthful of molasses?

ah yes, i found it. 2 months ago i asked this question: should i confront him?

wow, was the really 2 months ago? good loooordd it doesnt’ seem like that long ago…

Maybe you should course him in person, I’m sure the dream will stop and you will feel relieved :)

Hmmm…perhaps a few more of these dreams will help take the edge off of things?
Hopefully, by the time you do cuss him out in person, you’d have mellowed out a bit.
But I guess that wouldn’t be as satisfying either. Har.
At least you’d be less likely to get a restraining order against you!

Chica, I have bad news for you. Unfortunately, this is not about your old boyfriend. It’s about you. The old boyfriend is a stand in for a part of you, perhaps a part of you that you believe is unreliable?

I’m sure this is not the case for you, but if someone were drinking too much, and trying to stop, but being unable to do so, that might fit the profile.

Anyway, whatever it is, pay attention to it. You’re trying to tell yourself something that you’re not paying attention to. The dreams may keep on recurring until you deal with this.

poof, yeah, kind of, sometimes it’s a completely innocuous situation, but sometimes there’s an element of danger, and i’ll try to talk or scream, but nothing comes out. i dont remember any dreams where i have had trouble running away, but i don’t remember any dreams where i’ve tried. it doesn’t sound like i have a mouth full of molassas, it sounds more like my vocal cords have been tamped down, my mouth moves really big, my voice is incredibly soft, it’s like i’m whispering the scream.

that’s why these dreams are so different from usual. i just shout away.

daloon, i don’t understand the relationship? you’re saying when i shout at him, i’m actually shouting at myself? is that right? i’m not sure if i can really go with that theory for this particular recurring dream. i mean, i always have the dreams after i’ve seen him, and i really have a lot of undealt-with resentment and kind of bottled up-feelings about how mad i am.

are you saying it’s necesarily some type of addiction, or could i yelling at myself because i feel stressed out about my homework or something? becaues that’s the only other thing that really gets me going anymore, and i’ve been doing a lot better lately than in the past.

These ideas are all really helpful! Thanks guys! Keep them coming!

Yes, yourself. It’s standard therapist dream interpretation, or so says my therapist. So think of each character in the dream as a part of yourself. There would be a part of you that you are mad at, but you have no voice to confront it with.

It doesn’t need to be an addiction. It could be stress, if you have a bad habit, maybe working too hard, and it’s making you sick.

It could also be anger with your self at how you are handling some other relationship. I don’t know. You know your life. I don’t.

Also, it could be nothing. The thing is, dreams may be made up of random images in your brain, and then you try to impose some order on them. So it’s a creative exercise of matching real world things with the emotional feeling of the dream, not the specific facts of the dream.

@daloon: If it happens all the time after she sees him, wouldn’t it be one of those things where whatever is on your mind while falling asleep is what’s in your dreams?

Is there always a one to one correlation between seeing the guy and dreaming the dream?

(to your/daloon’s 2nd most recent answer) but doesn’t it seem kind of…like they go together? i want to curse him out in real life, but i don’t let myself, so i do it in my dreams?

(to the most recent answer) i don’t always have the dream after i see him, but the only times i have had it have been after seeing him, yes.

Could this is about frustration and disappointment with yourself that this is harder for you to get over with than you want it to be? He cheated, but on some level you still care and wish that it hadn’t happened and life would be the way it was, right? He ruined the plan. It was supposed to be different. Did you ever have your say? Closure?

I still have dreams filled with rage and fury towards my father, who committed suicide in 1980. The dreams are less frequent now, but our hardwiring remembers strong emotions – anger, shock, grief, disbelief, horror, unfairness.

You can write letters (that you tear up or set on fire) etc. to vent the emotions. Or you can visit and stick a fork in him. Or hand-cut a cord of firewood.

I vote for “go stick a fork in him”. It will be ever so satisfying, and not your fault. She made you do it with her enormous powers.
Go. Go now.
Don’t forget the fork.

Aaah, but screaming like that, while it may feel good, could backfire and only reinforce for him that he’s well-rid of you. Perception of psycho banshee is not perhaps what you want to convey?

alfreda i think you misunderstand, whether or not he believes himself to be “well-rid of me” i couldn’t possibly care less!! he’s asked me back about a bazillion times and i don’t give a flying fuck, honestly. he wasn’t who i thought he waas. staying with him after the first, i dont ‘know 3 weeks was one of the stupidest things ive ever done, i wasted years of my life with this loser ahhh!!! and i regret every minute with him. i can’t believe i didn’t see it before what a complete and utter loser he was. it’s not about the cheating. he’s a hypocrite and he’s not a man, he’s a baby. my purpose in cursing him out would not have anything to with his feelings. my purpose would be to vent my feelings. however he responds would not cause backfire. what would be a “backfire” was if i felt sorry for him or something afterward, or if for some very strange reason i thought about him more after that.

You asked “Could this is about frustration and disappointment with yourself that this is harder for you to get over with than you want it to be? He cheated, but on some level you still care and wish that it hadn’t happened and life would be the way it was, right? He ruined the plan. It was supposed to be different. Did you ever have your say? Closure?”

1. yes! definitely! i was completely over him and very happy with everything before i found out that he cheated. it wasn’t the cheating that made me as mad as how the realization changed the situation. it made me realize some thigns about him i hadn’t before. it’s a long story, but i’m sure you can imagine.

2. absolutely not!!!! i wouldn’t get back together with him if you gave me a million dollars. we had already broken up before i found out he cheated, so no plans were ruined, except my plan to not become a vitriolic bitch in my sleep every night.

3. no, i never did have my say. a 3rd party told me, and then when he found out he apologized IN AN EMAIL!!! because he’s a huge fucking baby.

4. i don’t really care what i convey to him, i just want to forget that he exists. i want poofandmonk’s “ignore” button.

alfreda, if in any part of this message it seems that i “blasted” you or something like that, i apologize. please do not think that my anger is directed at you. it’s absolutely not. this is one of the only places i have to vent about this issue, because my friends are tired of hearing about it, etc. thanks for listening, guys.

thanks for helping me work through this.

i still haven’t figured out what i should do though… :(

Oh, no, I don’t think you blasted me, La Chica. I’m willing to hold him still so you can blast away at him.

Apologized in an E-MAIL?

technically it was a FACEBOOK MESSAGE!!!! which is lower than e-mail, for those of you that don’t know…

Oh, that’s low.

he is.

You might be looking at changing the wrong end of the relationship. In my experience with my relationships, they tend to be ended by problems that appeared before deciding to love the person, but I decided to ignore that problem.

Perhaps you could daydream the way you met him and pretend that you decided that the relationship wouldn’t be worth settling for, and pretend that you talk to him earlier on and decide against going out with him again. Another good thing about this idea is that it puts you in charge.

Hope this helps.

@Nora; “i wouldn’t get back together with him if you gave me a million dollars,” ^^ quoting la chica ^^.

La Chica; One of the reasons we see therapists is to discharge that anger. We pay them to hear us whine, cry, obsess and repeat the stories endlessly. They aren’t allowed to get bored, or at least, not to show it. The anger that is eating at you gives him (ex) too much power.

@gailcalled: I never indicated that she should get back together with the guy. I was saying that she could pretend that she took the initiative and ended it when ‘red flags’ are discovered.

That would be a great idea, noraasnave, but we had already broken up when I found out that he had cheated, and the break up had been my idea. And I’m still in this situation…

Dreams are sometimes a private wish. I think you feel that you didn’t give him a piece of your mind before he left, and want to have your say. Maybe if you put your feelings on paper and send it to him, you will stop having the dream.

Skagg, I agree that dreams are often a private wish! I think that’s right on!

The only thing is, as I wrote above, he didn’t leave me, I left him!! and it was before I found out that he cheated on me. I know it’s a ton of info to read through. I’ve answered my own question like 10 times now.

I’m not the type to send someone an emo letter though. I’d rather angrily curse them out in person. Sending someone a letter gives them all the power because then they can read it to other people and laugh at how angry you are. If you’re standing there shouting at them, they’re freaking scared of you, and there’s no proof that it happened later, so if they want to share it, they have to recall it from memory. I just think in-person cursing is more effective anyway…

I know that you said you broke up with him, and that you didn’t know he was cheating, but obviously your subconscious is very angry about the whole thing for some reason. Whether you knew he was cheating or not, you did find out later that he was cheating on you while you were still together, and that might be where this anger is coming from.