Do you talk to your partner about your dreams?
Written by: Felicia Romano, MHC
Imagine waking up from an intense sex dream wherein you had a secret affair with some beautiful stranger, and then your partner casually asks over breakfast, “did you have any dreams last night?” How would you respond? This is a tough predicament for some people. Variations of this dilemma have arisen for multiple clients of mine recently, and I have been surprised to find that my clients often keep dreams like this to themselves in order to not rock the boat in their relationships.
It might seem like the path of least resistance to brush off perturbing dreams rather than contemplate them, especially ones that leave you questioning your sense of self. This being said, as a couples therapist and student of Carl Jung I have come to believe that partners can greatly benefit from routinely sharing dreams with each other. Indeed, even sharing dreams of cheating or other disturbing or dissonant content with partners could contribute to a deeper connection. In my experience, the most provoking dream images, the ones we might rather shy away from, can be the most important to look at with our trusted others.
Here I propose some thoughts and suggestions for introducing dream work in the context of close connections, with a particular emphasis on romantic partnerships. Many of these concepts can be implemented in dream work with close friends, family members, and even therapists who might not be well-versed in Jungian theory but who are open to working with dreams notwithstanding. You do not have to be an expert in order to grapple creatively with the unconscious–possessing a beginner’s mindset is prerequisite enough to jump in.
Dreams: Uncomfortable and intimate glimpses into ourselves
Why is it so nerve wracking to be transparent about the content of dreams with the people we care about? Well, to start, dreams elicit palpable emotions despite “not being real”. People experience all sorts of feelings in the wake of dreams. Reverberating vibes can then leak into the day and leave people feeling guilty, jealous, depressed, shameful, terrified, or disgusted after waking up from a nightmare or unsettling dream. On the other hand, dreams can also make people inspired, hopeful, nostalgic, confident, or motivated. Some are confusing, some are repetitive, and others are out of this world.
Most dreams are forgotten, but some stick with us. The dreams we tend to keep and carry are those that elicited some notable valence in the moment, and these often continue to have an impact as we go through life. Some dreams might outwardly seem entirely random and meaningless, but for depth-psychologically minded therapists like myself there are treasure troves of insight in even the fragmented images of dreams half-forgotten. The ones that stick during the day and make us feel something–those are where we begin.
Sharing the mysterious world of dreams within partnerships is a valuable and often challenging practice for cultivating self-insight. It can be nerve-wracking and downright unpleasant to share dreams with openness, and sometimes doing so leads to conflict. This said, navigating our inner landscapes together has the potential to foster closeness, vulnerability, teamwork, and opportunities to practice sharing hard truths in relationships. Giving each other glimpses of our own personal unconscious seems to unlock the potential for greater intimacy and acceptance, if done in a non-judgmental, open and curious way.
Being willing to stew together in the nonlinear and incomprehensible jumble of a dream with no clear motive is the ideal way to approach this work. Ask many questions and don’t look for any definitive answers–only possibilities and potentialities. Dreams can change and transform as we work with them, especially when a new dream deepens the context and evolution of a series. Being there to traverse your partner’s inner world alongside them is a way of supporting them in self-exploration and differentiating. So strap in tight, and be prepared for a wild ride.
Why people are hesitant to share dreams with partners
Seeing a partner grow and better understand themself by working with dreams can be inspiring and motivating. However, there are inevitable ways that a dream sharing practice can go south. One common pitfall is assuming that a partner’s dream image must be a wish-fulfillment, repressed inner longing, or unfulfilled desire of theirs. In reality, even if an ex-partner or hot coworker is a recurring character in your partner’s dream, that does not have to reflect their actual feelings about that particular person. The inner beings of a dream can be understood as symbolizing different parts of the dreamer and qualities they respond to in others. Your relationship is not doomed if your partner is cheating while dreaming. Your relationship is actually very normal. It is not bad or reprehensible to dream about being with other people. It is human.
You not being the subject of all your partner’s sex dreams makes sense; dreams serve a compensatory function, meaning they are often not going to show you what is happening in real life. Dreams are there to show you what you are missing. Plenty of people have realistic dreams, but even in mundane dreams something is altered in comparison to reality. Ideally, you are already experiencing intimacy with your partner in conscious waking reality and thus their sex dreams of others are to be expected–but even if you are in a dry spell, dreams about other people still do not necessarily indicate wanting to cheat or leave. So please, be easy on yourselves and your partners when romantic or sexual dream scenarios arrive uninvited in the context of monogamous arrangements.
As soon as something in a dream is taken as literal, the dream is concretized and loses its pulse. This solidifying of what is inherently fluid strips the dream of its ripe potential for ongoing interpretation and insight. You don’t ever know what anything in a dream means (by the way, googling dream meanings is usually silly for this reason–you can look things up, but don’t take the online interpretations too seriously). Don’t be too serious in this process–a sense of humor is helpful… dreams often have a sense of humor.
Practical suggestions for discussing dreams with partners
So, how might you start to approach dreams with your partner in a non-threatening way? The illusion of time can help. Dreams occur outside of the temporal dimension; a dream from many years ago can still live on in one’s psyche in as crisp and accessible a manner as a dream from this week. Many clients come to me with dream themes and images that have stayed with them since childhood. Retelling these dreams from the years prior to knowing one’s partner might be a safer and relatively uncomplicated way to start the process of dream sharing, especially if one’s more recent dreams contain the potential to make unwelcome waves in a partnership. That’s my first tip: don’t be afraid to share old dreams. They can start some cool conversations.
More tips: Narrate your dreams in the present tense when you share them. Many dreams are experienced from a first-person perspective, but other times the dreamer feels they are floating above the situation, or as though they are not an embodied ego at all but some passive ethereal witness. In any case, my advice is to Go towards what is most salient and spend time with it. Let yourself relive the dream in your body and mind’s eye. Go into details and describe even the seemingly arbitrary or insignificant features of things that you remember. Some people are more visual and some are more narrative in their recounting of dreams; try to embody the felt sense of being there either way. Reflect on how it sat with you once you woke up. Learn about yourself by seeing how your dreams impact and live with you. This is a way to become yourself, and for your partner to witness and support you in that becoming.
Start slow and move at your own pace – you don’t have to talk about your sex dreams right away. If you want to share a dream, first ask yourself if you would be okay if the roles were reversed. Checking in with yourself by doing thought experiments can help to contextualize where you are at and what you can handle. For example, you could ask yourself how you would feel if your partner told you they dreamed of dumping you and dating your best friend. Really try to imagine your partner telling you this and let yourself be impacted by that news. Of course, it is impossible to know how you would really respond if this happened, but you can try to map out some of your internal sensitivities ahead of time and temper your conversations accordingly.
The truth is, you probably know if you can emotionally handle hearing these things or not. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to know the answers. But, if you are confident you will be able to manage your own reactivity, opening the conversation up into even deeper territory could mean asking your partner if they ever dream of being with someone else intimately. Then see what happens. Notice what your partners are dreaming about sexually and be curious about any repetitive themes or feelings elicited from these dreams. Sex dreams have the potential to contain uncharted parts of our identities we have not yet fully come to know.
And again, not every dream needs to or wants to be shared. Discernment is necessary for this to be productive and optimal. Some things are just for you, or or you and your dream journal / groggy collection of voice memos, or you and your therapist.
When to share, when not to share
So, how do you know when exactly it makes sense to tell your partner then? I have some personal opinions on this grounded in lived experience. I am a huge dream nerd. This means that oversharing dreams is something I have needed to account for and adjust to. Just as people do not want to be trauma-dumped on, they also do not want to be dream-dumped on with no awareness or consideration of the impact such chaotic content can have. I cannot stress enough the importance of cultivating self-awareness in this process. I learned, after multiple missteps, sharing unfiltered and unwelcomed globs of dream content only to be met with understandable frustration from my partner, to sift for the gold before bringing it into my relationship.
Oversharing dreams is not usually the case in the general population, though, at least as far as I can tell. More frequently, my couples and individual clients do not talk about their dreams with anyone at all – and especially dread the thought of being found out having ones that might be upsetting or offensive to their partner. Some clients won’t even keep a dream journal, for fear it will be read by their partner. In my clinical experience I have found that many partnerships are characterized by an underwhelming amount of dream talk. There is often an aversion to holding confusing or upsetting dream images in one’s mind, nevermind showing these to a partner and trying to grapple together with the potential meaning or significance of such.
Sharing dreams with intimate partners is not a perfect science, as not all dreams want to be shared or worked with. So, let’s agree to not necessarily share every dream, and make a point to be mindful about the timing and delivery. There is a tactful and balanced way of knowing whether divulging your dream to your partner is the right move or not. At any given moment the circumstances might be such that bringing up last night’s dream of an ex is just not the way to go – certainly this is no way to greet your partner before they’ve had their daily coffee. Consider your motive for sharing, and perhaps even preemptively foster some mutual buy-in to the process of truth-telling and receiving each other’s dreams. I wish you luck and wonder on your journey into the unconscious!
Closing ideas and conversation starters
Tell your partner you have been keeping track of your dreams and noticing motifs, then invite their own contribution to the conversation
Understand that dreams use symbols and characters in a non-literal way, so that at baseline we are not taking the images offered in dreams as reflections of reality or containing prophetic qualities
Wish-fulfillment is only one kind of dream. Many dreams are simply your brain’s way of working through things, potential outcomes, past occurrences, and ongoing conundrums in your conscious or unconscious life
When you start paying attention to dreams, they tend to change. In what way do your dreams change once the conversation opens up in your partnership?
This is an explorative process, and there is no end or goal to arrive at – some dreams can only be understood years later. Some never make any sense at all
Making and sharing art about dreams is another way to engage relationally
Waking dreams, intrusive thoughts and fantasies can be explored in this context as well–letting yourself be vulnerable enough to own your daytime dreams is encouraged and commendable!
Wherever your dream work takes you, I hope that your partnerships grow deeper as you look more deeply into yourself. I am open to hearing feedback on this article and certainly would love to know if anyone disagrees with anything said here, or has a different perspective to offer. Sweet dreams!
Felicia Romano, MHC is a musician, psychotherapist, and self-identified dream nerd. Fel studied depth psychology and counseling at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA, and currently provides depth-oriented and psychodynamic therapy to couples and individuals in Massachusetts. Fel wrote her Master’s thesis on adaptive resonance, offering clinical considerations for navigating clients’ inner landscapes using both physiological and phenomenal data. Fel is enthusiastic about creatively using the tension of dissonance to propel clients forward into the direction of their values and dreams.
