Dreaming of sex with an ex — what does it mean?

What does it mean to dream about sex with an ex?

Few dreams cause as much private alarm as this one, particularly if you are happily with someone else. It is worth saying immediately: this is one of the most commonly reported dreams there is, and it very seldom means what people fear it means.

Dreams borrow the most charged image available to express something. Sex is the most charged image most people have, and an ex is one of the most emotionally detailed figures stored in memory. The dream is reaching for vividness, not making a recommendation.

Nostalgia and the unfinished

Missing a period, not a person

Very often the dream is about time rather than about them. An ex belongs to a particular chapter — an age, a city, a version of yourself with different worries. Dreaming about them can be nostalgia for that chapter, wearing the only face it has.

Emotional work that was never completed

Relationships rarely end cleanly. Something goes unsaid, a question is never answered, an ending arrives before the feeling does. Dreams have a strong tendency to return to unfinished material, and an ex is often the most unfinished material a person has.

Rosalind Cartwright’s research suggests that dreaming about a former partner belongs to the work of processing a separation rather than obstructing it. These dreams are more often a sign of movement than of being stuck.

A quality you are missing

Sometimes the dream is not about the relationship at all, but about one specific thing it contained: being desired, being at ease, laughing easily, being known without explanation. The dream reaches for the person who carried that quality, because that is where it is filed.

Comparison with where you are now

Occasionally the dream really is doing a comparison — but usually of a feeling rather than of a person. If your current relationship is short of something, the mind may illustrate the gap using the last place it found that thing.

How it felt afterwards

If the relationship ended long ago and felt finished: Almost always nostalgia rather than desire. A closed chapter making a brief appearance.

If it ended recently: Ordinary processing. Expect these; they usually thin out on their own.

If you are in a new and good relationship: The most alarming version and the least alarming in substance. It is very common, and it says little about your current relationship.

If the dream left guilt or unease: Worth noticing what the guilt attaches to. Often it is about the fact of having dreamt it, not about anything real.

If it repeats over and over: Something has not been laid down. That may be worth looking at directly, awake.

Why the mind reaches backward

The continuity hypothesis holds that dreams draw their material from waking concerns, and old relationships are unusually rich material: emotionally detailed, well rehearsed, and stored with a great deal of sensory specificity. They are, in a sense, the easiest thing for the sleeping mind to pick up.

That is worth remembering the morning after. A dream is an image the mind assembled from what it had close to hand. It is not a verdict on your loyalties.

Sources and further reading

• Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) — unresolved wishes and why they return in such concrete forms.
• Rosalind Cartwright, The Twenty-four Hour Mind (2010) — her research suggests that dreams about a former partner belong to processing rather than to stagnation.
• G. William Domhoff, The Scientific Study of Dreams (2003) — the continuity hypothesis, and why such dreams arrive in waves rather than steadily.