Dreaming of being unfaithful yourself — what does it mean?

What does it mean to dream that you are unfaithful?

You wake and remember it at once. You did something in the dream you would never do, and the guilt is there before you can remind yourself that nothing happened. Some people carry it for days.

This dream is far more common than people think, and it is almost never a hidden wish. It uses a strong image for something that is usually a good deal more ordinary.

The guilt that came first

The act the dream chose

Infidelity is perhaps the clearest image we have for breaking an agreement. If the dream is to show you that you are giving something attention at the relationship’s expense, there are few sharper ways to do it. Work, a project, a friend, an interest — any of these can lie behind it.

When it is about you, not the relationship

Many describe the dream in periods when they are dissatisfied with themselves rather than with their partner. The guilt is already there, and the dream looks for an act to attach it to. The infidelity then becomes an image rather than a content.

When something genuinely is unresolved

Sometimes the connection is more direct. If there is an attraction you have not admitted, or a distance in the relationship you have not spoken about, the dream can point straight at it. The mark of this is usually that it recurs and that the person stays the same.

Who you were unfaithful with

If it was a stranger: The most common variant. It points more often to something undefined you are missing than to a person, and rarely concerns attraction.

If it was your ex: Usually concerns a period of your life rather than the person. The ex is often an image of who you were back then.

If it was someone you know well: The most uncomfortable, and the one that most often causes embarrassment. Closeness and confidence use the same imagery as attraction in dreams.

If you were found out: Then the fear of consequences is the core, not the act. Many recognise that from entirely different parts of life.

If you felt no guilt in the dream: Worth noticing. The absence of guilt is often described in periods when someone feels hemmed in by obligations generally.

When it comes back again and again

If it comes again and again, it is worth looking at what in the relationship has gone unsaid. The dream often has a simple trigger: a conversation being put off, an imbalance in who gives most, a sense of not being seen.

The dream sits close to, but differs from, dreaming of infidelity in general, where the partner’s betrayal is usually the starting point. Here you are the one acting, and that turns the whole reading round: this is a dream about you.

Sources and further reading

• Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) — on embarrassment dreams and how dreaming stages what we otherwise hold back.
• G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003) — the continuity hypothesis, relevant to the dream arriving when something in the relationship or in your own life is unresolved.
• Ernest Hartmann, The Nature and Functions of Dreaming (2011) — on emotional processing, relevant to why the guilt lingers so long after waking.