Delicate Today

[Depression = 72% of members]

Today I'm feeling suddenly delicate again, after feeling so good recently about moving on.

This past week... .we passed the "longest no contact ever" mark. The longest we had gone without speaking was 12 weeks before. Now I'm going into my 13th... .

And then I've been having weird jealous dreams. The odd thing is, it's like my brain won't even dream about HIM personally. The dreams are clearly about him (as they involve the on-again-off-again ex and other characters from our relationship, as well as all the same emotions and dynamics and problems) but instead of he himself appearing, he is now consistently being "replaced" in my dreams by this guy I knew as a kid in my neighborhood, like 12 years ago. And I don't know why. What, subconsciously, does this friend I had as a kid (and was not attracted to or anything like that) have to do with my BPDex, such that my dream-life is now consistently (like, five or six times now) having the one "stand in for" or "play the part of" the latter?

Another weird thing about last nights dream is that in the dream it was "revealed" that the ex never even really existed, and was just a character my BPDex ("played by" that kid from my childhood) had invented in order to cover up his relationship with a THIRD (or, rather, fourth?) party whom I was once a bit jealous of. Now, I know that this isn't literally true, but maybe it's my fear that he's moved on to an additional person other than the ex even? I don't know.

[UmbrellaBoy]

Today I'm feeling suddenly delicate again, after feeling so good recently about moving on.

This past week... .we passed the "longest no contact ever" mark. The longest we had gone without speaking was 12 weeks before. Now I'm going into my 13th... .

And then I've been having weird jealous dreams. The odd thing is, it's like my brain won't even dream about HIM personally. The dreams are clearly about him (as they involve the on-again-off-again ex and other characters from our relationship, as well as all the same emotions and dynamics and problems) but instead of he himself appearing, he is now consistently being "replaced" in my dreams by this guy I knew as a kid in my neighborhood, like 12 years ago. And I don't know why. What, subconsciously, does this friend I had as a kid (and was not attracted to or anything like that) have to do with my BPDex, such that my dream-life is now consistently (like, five or six times now) having the one "stand in for" or "play the part of" the latter?

Another weird thing about last nights dream is that in the dream it was "revealed" that the ex never even really existed, and was just a character my BPDex ("played by" that kid from my childhood) had invented in order to cover up his relationship with a THIRD (or, rather, fourth?) party whom I was once a bit jealous of. Now, I know that this isn't literally true, but maybe it's my fear that he's moved on to an additional person other than the ex even? I don't know.

[houseofswans]

Hi UB,

Your dreams are quite similar to mine.

Occasionally my ex will be 'herself' in the dream, but mostly it is someone I don't know - I know that may sound weird, but this person is fully formed (as a person can be in a dream), I could describe her, but as far as I am aware, I have never met this person!

Maybe she is the archetypal 'dream woman'

[patientandclear]

Speaking of dream guidance about all this: I used to have all manner of illuminating dreams about my ex, where my subconscious was trying to reveal something it had understood already that my conscious mind was overlooking.  In one, we were back together & went to a festival.  I stepped out to get food & was gone for just a little longer than I'd expected or told him.  When I returned, he was just -- gone.  No note, no explanation.  I drove past his apartment & sure enough, there he was working away at his solitary desk at the window, but when I buzzed, no answer.  Dream was teaching me that the smallest things could trigger his fear of abandonment with catastrophic consequences.

In another, we were back together & I left his apartment for another errand.  When I returned, he was asleep.  When I woke him, he was nice enough but seemed to have no idea why I was there, and to be expecting someone else.  No need to explicate that one at all.

Finally though, I had the weirdest one that was digging up the deeper self-concept stuff that this r/s intersected with in me.  In this dream, the man I really wanted to be in a r/s with 20 years ago, who had had a crush on me & I was oblivious, but by the time I was interested he wasn't, and ever since we've been best of friends, and now he's married to a great woman ... .that guy was in my dream, and he'd split with his wife.  I ran into him & was thinking, hey, maybe we should be together, at last?  But then I realized he was dating ... .the very woman my BPDex was seeing after me.  Like, this woman will always be chosen over me in any choice a man I care about has between me and her.

Our dreaming minds know a lot.  Your interpretation of "BPD ex's ex never existed" seems pretty plausible.  That is rough for me too -- once the r/s with the woman after me ended, it's somehow particularly strange, and rejecting and hurtful, that he doesn't turn to me, but instead is moving on to yet another woman, given how close he says we are and all the stuff he said once upon a time about having waited his whole life to find me.

Listen to those dreams! They're telling us important pieces of the truth.