Other people’s dreams are never interesting…except when they’re about sex. Each week, our dream analyst Lauri Loewenberg tells one lucky reader what their dirty dream means. This week, a reader asks Lauri:
I’ve been having a series of dreams in which I feel serious affection for other women. In each dream I see an unknown woman across a room or whatever and it’d be like a meeting I’ve always wanted — like love at first sight. And it’d always be very secretive and exciting and passionate. It can stop at looking, but most of the time it ends with making out or even sex.
Sometimes the details are so strong that I remember the girls as if they are an actual memory, and the last one was called Izzy. Furthermore the girls are always very skinny, maybe even anorexic-like, and I find it very attractive. I’ve been dieting a lot lately with eating-disordered tendencies, but not at an extreme stage.
In real life I really don’t feel awkward about the dreams but rather I actually wish they were real! For as far as I know I’m straight, but I’m sure I’d be able to love another woman all the same. Are these dreams a reflection of my life and thoughts?
Lauri: Dreams are thoughts. Dreaming is a thinking process, but rather than thinking in words we are thinking in symbols, pictures and stories; this is because our night thoughts (our dreams) happen in the subconscious mind rather than the conscious mind. It’s a different language but still just as important — if not more –than waking language because we are far more honest and insightful when we dream. Any emotion you feel in a dream is directly connected to current waking life emotions.
The desire you feel for these women in your dreams isn’t actually connected to a waking life desire for women but rather a waking life desire to have the waif-like, heroin-chic image that the girls in your dreams have. I believe your dream is very insightful as to what is going on in the minds of women who suffer from eating disorders. Your dream shows us how strong that desire is to have a smaller frame than you perceive yourself to have… so strong that it is equivalent to sexual desire. As we all know, sexual desire is one of the hardest desires to control!
Interesting that one of the girls even had a name. This is actually a good sign. It shows us that you are aware and have “identified” the fact that you may actually have a problem. Recognizing it is always the first step. I hope that you will address this issue before it gets out of hand because your very life is at stake! Please do it now before it is too late.
