Outgoingness and love stories, what do they mean?

Hey community!

I'm a guy in my 20s and wanted some help interpreting what my dreams are trying to say to me. These dreams used to happen fairly often in my younger years, but as I fell in love with a girl, went to college, moved into a house together, they just kind of stopped. They've been coming back recently and I'm trying to understand why. Usually, in these dreams I'm the person I want to strive to be. I'm usually in school or some other outing and am very popular and friendly with all the people guys and girls. I don't want to be sexual or anything with girls and am just in this be positive/have fun no matter what you're doing mood. It's awesome and I feel great, even after I wake up until after a little while I go back to my normal anxious, stressed out, tired self. It's a good feeling being popular and accepted and just trying to have a good time. I love having these dreams.

Sometimes I also have this dream where I'm hanging out and see this girl and we do some sort of adventure together and just connect. There's this spark between us and butterfly feelings and something happens that comes in between us and I get rejected and am upset over it, but there's this feeling that I know we'll be together in the end. Sort of like a love story. Like for example the most recent one was that I was at my girlfriends family's house (she wasn't there and actually didn't even really exist in my dream), and my girlfriends cousin was there. We had to go do something and solved a mystery and made a really good team. We were happy and proud of ourselves and also had this deep connection. It was clear we liked liked each other. Then she was at her house and something happened and we couldn't be together, and I had to leave without her and we were both upset. Me more so because it was like she wasn't giving me a chance, but there was still this feeling we'd end up together in the end.

Now I know it's weird I'm dreaming about my GFs cousin, but when I woke up I didn't have any feelings for the cousin. It seemed like I was just using her as an outlet in my dream.

I'm so confused about what my dreams are saying to me. I do have anxiety and work from home and am trying to work on issues I have. It seems like when I get my head cleared I can have these sort of dreams, just don't know what they mean. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys!

I see this is your first post; welcome to the forums. :welcome:

Dream interpretation is highly subjective and unique to each person, so ultimately the best person to answer what these dreams mean is you. Dream interpretation is both an art and a science, and it takes a little bit of patience and knowing and honesty with yourself.

They could be projections of your desires for a better, happier, more loving and less stressful lifestyle. Perhaps indicating that you should/could begin to make changes in your life to bring them more in line with what you want. Or that you can be a better/happier person than you are now. Some combination of these could possibly be what the dream represents.

What I find most interesting is not the romantic side of the dreams, but that you mention that in the dreams, you are a more refined/better/less stressed version of yourself. Don't ignore this detail.

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Originally Posted by JadeGreen

I see this is your first post; welcome to the forums...

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Hi and thank you for the warm welcome! :) I didn't expect an answer so quick so I appreciate that.

First of all, even before I started searching and posting online I wondered what my dreams were trying to tell me. Funny thing is, I came to sort of the same conclusion you did. Maybe my dream is telling me how I imagine my life to be if anxiety wasn't holding me back. Maybe this is the person I strive to be. Maybe this is how I see my life. These were the thoughts I had and it's actually quite obvious to me that I would love to be the person I dream to be.

I've been working on myself, exercising, meditation, being mindful to help with the anxiety and stress. It seems like I have these good bouts and get motivated/happy, but eventually fall back to being anxious. Maybe I just need to make myself disciplined enough to do it every day; but in any case that's not a problem for this forum.

Honestly, after reading your wonderful reply I do feel like my dreams are trying to give me motivation to make myself THAT guy I am in my dreams. And after having these dreams I do feel more motivated to make my dreams reality.

You mention dream interpretation is an art and a science. I am extremely new to the field and am curious, is interpreting my dreams something I just need to think hard about and ask myself what my dreams really mean to me? Or is dream interpretation something I need to practice and gain experience with like any other skill and the more I learn the better I get at interpreting?

Thanks for being such a huge help Jade!

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You mention dream interpretation is an art and a science. I am extremely new to the field and am curious, is interpreting my dreams something I just need to think hard about and ask myself what my dreams really mean to me? Or is dream interpretation something I need to practice and gain experience with like any other skill and the more I learn the better I get at interpreting?

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The reason I say its both an art and a science is because you sort of have to be both logical and creative at the same time to make connections between dreams and waking life. For example, I was trying to figure out why a good deal of my dreams showed me as an Asian boy when I'm a white person in WL. The conclusion that I came to was that I started lucid dreaming at the same time that I began practicing Taekwondo, so perhaps my brain somehow made a connection between the oriental themes of my Taekwondo studio and lucid dreaming since I was in a phase of heavy learning for both of these hobbies at the same time.

And that's what I mean when I say that the best person to interpret dreams is you. Since you have the most knowledge of your personal experiences and how your mind works, if that makes any sense.

The thing is, that there really is no wrong answer to what a dream means. There are just some explanations that make more sense than others. Though one thing you might want to keep in mind is that sometimes things in dreams don't have meaning. Don't assume that everything you dream about is some big life changing thing. (I've seen some dreamers try to interpret every detail of their dreams and they take things a little too far in my opinion.) It should be obvious to you what elements of your dreams have meaning and what ones do not.