Do dreams come from something in your subconscious? Photo / 123RF
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I've always admired my female best friend's confidence, style and zest for life. Then out of the blue I recently had an intense dream that I was making love to her. I have a boyfriend and I know I'm not gay - but the dream has really thrown me for a loop. I'm too embarrassed to talk to my boyfriend about it - and now I can't even look my friend in the eye. Don't dreams come from something in your subconscious? - Michelle
Hi Michelle,
To answer your last question first, there is no scientific consensus about dreams and what they mean. This lack of agreement among the experts suggests that there are many reasons why we dream, and most of them have nothing to do with Freud's notion of "subconscious desires". It seems you are fearful this dream says something about your sexual orientation or preferences. This is a far-from-obvious conclusion. In order to not feel awkward around your friend, it seems vital that you stop imposing a literal meaning on your dream.
We know that people are selective about what memories we pay attention to, and often it is the ones that disturb or worry us that we recall and look to unravel, searching for the feared hidden message. Dream analysis is a very complex process, even if you believe that some dreams have significance. The obvious meaning taken from a dream is often far from the relevant or accurate one.
One way we have found helpful to interpret dreams that feel significant is to see everything in the dream as being an aspect of yourself. Through this lens, your dream may be about your friend embodying an element of selfhood or sexuality that you find attractive and ardently desire for yourself.
We would also encourage you to reflect on why you have such an alarming reaction to the possibility that you are not as "straight" as you thought. It is becoming increasingly clear that for many people, their sexual orientation is more of a continuum than neat categories like "gay", "straight", or even "bi". Many people report attraction tends to become less gender-specific as we age, particularly past midlife. Recognising that you can have a sexual response to someone of the same gender doesn't mean you have to act on it or have it define your sexuality.
It's also important to recognise that our sexual responses can be involuntary. Research suggests this is particularly true for women. Meredith Chives, Professor of Psychology from Queens University of Ontario, did a landmark study on this. It showed that the genitals of straight women (but not men) became engorged with blood when watching videos of sexual encounters regardless of whether the sex was hetero, male with male, female with female or even bonobo monkeys! Notably, these women reported no subjective experience of arousal to these images. They were certainly not expressing any wish to have sex with bonobo monkeys, just as you clearly have no subjective desire to have sex with women.
Just as there can be a disconnect between our physiological arousal and what we find psychologically attractive and arousing, there is also an essential difference between what we fantasise about and what we want to do in real life. Unfortunately, in English, we use the same word, "fantasy", to describe both things we would really want to do, "I fantasise about holidaying in Costa Rica", and things we would never do, "I fantasise about killing my boss".
As with dreams, it is possible to explore and interpret fantasies in many ways, but unhelpful and inappropriate to take them literally.
In short, what arouses us subconsciously (in dreams) or consciously (in day-to-day life) does not define our sexual preference in partners/activities. So please do not be alarmed or worried by your dream. It would be helpful if you could accept this and other dreams that trouble you as the far-from-simple byproduct of the incredibly complex processing of the sophisticated intricacies of human experience, not necessarily reduceable to simplistic explanations.
As your anxiety about the meaning of your dream reduces, we suspect you will return to being more at ease around your friend and that you can continue to admire and enjoy her confidence, style and zest for life.
As far as talking to your boyfriend about your dream is concerned. The first question is; what makes you feel that's necessary? While we are big on openness and vulnerability in communication between partners, it's also essential that each of us have some privacy in our heads- that we have thoughts, feelings, and impulses that we choose not to share. A key example is the kind of sexual fantasy discussed above that we find arousing but has nothing to do with what we want to enact in our lives. You may choose to share this with your partner so that you feel known, understood, and accepted by them, but there's nothing wrong with you if you want to keep it private.
Your decision on what to share will partly depend on how secure your partner is. If it will make him as anxious as it made you, then it is perhaps best to keep your dream to yourself. Likewise, if it touches on some fantasy of his that might lead to him encouraging you to take this dream seriously when you find it distressing. (We mention this because the most common hetero-male sexual fantasy is sex with two women.)
If he is a secure kind of guy who can think in psychologically sophisticated ways, you can perhaps share your dream with some nuanced reflections to help you make sense of it. Processing your dream with his help will work best if you present it with a relaxed and secure demeanour.
We are aware we a saying several almost contradictory things in response to your questions. The core of our message is to stop worrying. Your brain involuntarily doing weird stuff is just a part of being human. You can explore possible meanings if you want to, but don't be simplistic about it. Or you can just ignore it. Your dream doesn't have to mean anything significant, and you don't have to share it with anyone.
• Verity & Nic are psychologists and family therapists who have specialised in relationship and sex therapy for more than 25 years. They have been working on their own relationship for more than 40 years and have two adult children.
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