The Affair Dreams are a topic that many of the affair books either do not discuss or only mention in passing. Given that as humans, we may spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping. When you spend that much time sleeping, you would think that the experts would spend at least some time on the topic. When they ignore of neglect mentioning an activity involved in 1/3 of daily activity, they miss out on an important topic.
Dreams are important, even when you are dealing with affairs. In the case of cheaters, affair dreams often occur before and after the affair. As their mind is dealing with changes, there are changes in their dreams both in terms of content and intensity.
Even as the betrayed spouse, affair dreams are a concern. There may be dreams of where you are fearful of an affair or the dreams where you dream of the affair ending. You may even at times dream about you having an affair. Such dreams represent your mind working at making sense and coming to grips with what you are facing.
Although you may collapse exhausted at the end of the day, your mind continues working during the night. Any new insights or discoveries are dealt with. Your mind works at making sense out of what you are aware of. Your dreams are part of your mind either detoxifying material or making connections between the pieces of information that you have.
There may also be times that your fantasies influence your dreams, in terms of your struggle of trying to make sense out of what the cheater is doing, or hopes that you could just have a ‘start over’.
The cheater’s dreams may be very different. Although both of you may be dreaming about some aspect of the affair, what it means is often totally different. What the affair means to you and what it means to the cheater are often two very different things.
Although I think that it is often helpful for the cheater to also talk to you about their dreams. Such discussions open up more avenues of your relationship and provide you with ideas about what they are thinking and feeling. Although there are some benefits to discussing dreams, there are also risks.
You have to consider whether you are ready to hear about their dreams and not take what they are telling you personally or reading too much into it. Some spouses are reluctant to tell you what goes on in their mind based on it being made fun of or used against them. For this reason, you will have to show respect when the cheater shares their dreams with you. You will need to treat it as a special snapshot of their inner world. Just because they dream about something does not mean it will happen or that it won’t. Them dreaming about it is an indicator that their mind is still working at making sense out of things.
If the cheater is indulging in more fantasy sex type of affair dreams, you will want to discuss this with them. Such dreams pose challenges. They are not looking at porn, they are not physically having an affair, yet there may be a part of them that is still wanting to be with the lover and replaying the old lover tapes. (I go into greater depth about the role of fantasy in “Why He Cheats“.)
As long as the old lover tapes continue being played, the lover remains a threat. Even though the affair is over, when the tapes are replayed, the neurons and emotions are still being fired up. For this reason, you need to have some awareness of whether or not they are having affair dreams.
Best Regards,
Jeff Murrah
