Why We Have Romantic Dreams About Other People

It happens to everyone from time to time: we find ourselves having romantic dreams about people other than our boyfriend/girlfriend. You might even wake up feeling guilty, like you’ve cheated. Why does this happen and what does it mean? Here are the reasons why we have romantic dreams about other people:

1.    We have someone on our minds. This can be as simple as having run into someone recently, or having memories or thoughts of someone. Even after a brief interaction with an old friend or acquaintance, we can hold onto their image in our minds. While we sleep, our minds process all of the emotions and experiences we’ve had recently and this often includes encounters that we’ve had.

2.    We are dealing with stress. Our minds use dreams to process information that it can’t work through while we are awake. When we sleep, our subconscious explores the emotions, stresses, anxieties and changes that we face in our daily lives. In this case, the dream may not have anything to do with the person you were dreaming about, it might just be your minds way of processing information while you sleep and that person just happened to be a part of it.

3.    We have unfinished business. Another possibility for having a romantic dream about someone is that we have unfinished business with them and are holding on to it in the back of our minds. Maybe it was someone that you liked but didn’t get the courage to ask out, maybe it’s someone that you broke up with but didn’t get closure on the relationship, and so on. If we have unfinished business with someone, we can store the emotions in our subconscious for years. Our minds use dreams as a way of exploring these emotions while we sleep.

4.    We are looking for something. If your dream was about a stranger they could simply be representing a quality that you are looking for in your own relationship. You could be holding on to the idea that you want your partner to be more romantic or outgoing or affectionate and your dreams are a way of processing these desires as we sleep. You may not even realize it consciously yet, but your dreams may be trying to tell you something.