I don't know what my dream means!

Hi everyone,
I am completely new to this forum but I really needed some help.
I'll tell you some back story and then the dream, hopefully someone can tell me what to think of it.
About a year ago I met a girl at "rock camp" where a bunch of teenagers pretty much play instruments together and chill for a week. Let's call her "C", she was a real, pure soul, punk rock chick :P needless to say we hit it off pretty suddenly and found out we only lived about 15mins away from eachother. Over the last 12 months we have grown closer and closer, and to say I love her with all of my heart and soul would be the biggest understatment of all time, and she feels the same towards me we are bestfriends(mutual choice to not be in a relationship - right now she is 15 turning 16 and I am 18 and I didn't feel totally comfortable at least untill she finishes highschool). I would never, I could never, EVER! harm her, and while I am very sexually attracted to her with out being her boyfriend, I wouldn't want to have sex (she is a virgin - we have discussed her losing it in length :P ), you can probably guess what this dream was about, but still here goes..

From what I can remember.. she came to visit me and we were both really happy and went out for a banana milkshake (that's kind of our thing cos we both love them :P ) anyway after that we went back to my place and it was just me and her this next bit happened so quickly, she was saying something..and I hit her and then I stripped her, and I raped her, then just walked of like it was nothing.

At that point I woke up in tears, I could never bring my self to hit this girl I love her more than anything, I would take a bullet to the heart for her but I dreamt of brutally raping her.. why?? I could never even think about actually raping someone let alone my bestfriend.
Does anyone know what this means? I really need some proper answers :(

First of all, I would like to make sure you know: it does not matter what you do in a nonlucid dream in the sense that you are not conscious and are not in control, so there is nothing to feel guilty about. You did not choose to have this dream. And this is not an indication of any hidden desire to harm your best friend. What matters is that you would never do something like this in your waking conscious life: that is who you are, not this dream character who acted so out of character for you.

I think sometimes our subconscious likes to shock us and is really nasty toward our conscious selves. It happens. In that sense the dream may not necessarily have a deep meaning, and it may be better to try to not focus too much on it. If you focus too much on it alas a nightmare is more likely to repeat, and this was definitely a nightmare.

What could this dream mean? Maybe it is a reflection of the fact that part of you really would like to have sex, and yet you know you are not getting any, so you have frustrated hormones maybe?

Also dreams about sex are not necessarily literally about sex. It could be that this dream is about the "violence" of your emotions, that part of you feels that you are so strongly attracted to her that this is almost violent (not literally but metaphorically).

Also sometimes dream characters of others are not necessarily about the other but more about different parts of one's own personality: maybe in that sense you feel somehow like you are divided but two different parts of your personality are vehemently merging, pent up energy and the need to vent or something like that. I don't know, just brainstorming here.

Or it could be about animal instincts, primitive male, taking posession, some part of you saying "mine!" in a way that in waking life you would not do, but perhaps in waking life you are protective of her and the dark side of protectiveness is that you might be willing to commit violence on her behalf if needed, and this dream is kind of a caveman mentality dream.

Something to keep in mind is that in non-lucid dreams our awareness of our own personality may be low, and moral values and inhibitions that control our waking lives are asleep, so we are more likely to have uninhibited dreams that are totally out of waking life character because among other things our memory of waking life is low, we do not remember that this is not something we would never do. Anyway, I would not beat myself up about this too much if I were you. It was a nightmare, and hopefully it won't happen again. Peace.

Well, the important thing to remember is that this is just a dream. None of it happened outside of your own thoughts.

Really, this might not mean anything. Dreams can be FUCKED UP. You may be the complete opposite of your normal self in a dream. The logic centers of your brain are pretty much turned of while unconscious, so you don't really make conscious decisions -- you aren't really you.

If I had to give an interpretation, I would say that this may be a manifestation of your attraction to her. I had a similar (albeit much milder) dream a few years ago. There was this really hot girl I wanted to have sex with really badly. I once had a dream where I pinned her against the wall, pulled up her shirt, and sucked on her breast. The dream ended there, but I (or, rather, my dream self) had the intention of forcing myself on her. Now, would I ever do this IRL? Fuck no. But that doesn't stop my subconscious dream self from doing it. Same goes for when I've injured/killed people in dreams.

EDIT: JoannaB ninja'd me. Basically, everything she said.

Thanks guys this helped a lot! :)