A recent greentext post about an imaginary wife made me think of this.

Have you ever had a dream, where you fell in love with a dream character?

I’ve had at least a couple over the years that I can vaguely remember. The dreams were so vivid, and the feeling of love for this imaginary person was so strong, that I woke up feeling rather heartbroken and a sense of longing.

Anyone else?

  • LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz
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    17 days ago

    I met, fell in love, got married, bought a house, started a family and grew old together with a woman i met in my dreams. In one night, i lived a lifetime. It was so super realistic that I woke up devastated that it was a dream. It took me weeks to stop thinking about it constantly throughout the day, and even to this day I still think about it occasionally going on 15 years later.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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        17 days ago

        I remember that post. Always made me wonder if that really happened or if it was just good story telling.

        • LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz
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          17 days ago

          It’s a reference to an old Reddit post where somebody had the same situation I did where they met someone yand fell in love and had long and happy life until they started noticing a lamp in their living room that sidn’t look right. Drove them crazy in this dream and eventually forced them to wake up. I’m on mobile and can’t find original post ATM but that’s the jist.

          • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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            17 days ago

            Thank you! That was enough for me to find it I think.

            I can definitely relate to this just not as deep of a semi-lucid dream

    • ValorieAF [she/her]@lemmy.world
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      17 days ago

      On the flip side, I once had a super vivid dream that my wife started ghosting me, and left me for someone else. Years passed and I was still alone, lost interest in all of my hobbies, had to get rid of our pets, and I caught up with her randomly and she looked like she was much happier and better off, and I was so upset in the dream that I considered suicide. Woke up and was relieved that it was just a dream, but frustrated with my brain for putting me through all of that.

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Once, in the middle of a long and happy relationship, I had a dream where there was simply no reference to my partner in the dream, background or foreground. My brain went on to invent a person who was lovely in every way. We were equally crazy for each other and it was absolute heaven.

    Then my brain went “yeah but you’re with your real life partner so you basically cheated” and I woke up.

    Fuckin wiseass brain pullin shit lol

    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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      17 days ago

      I’ve had a few where i was knowingly cheating on my wife. But there were some weirder ones where the dream lady and my wife would be interchangeable at various points or meld into one super lover.

  • OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I had a dream that I was driving a horse cart down a dusty gravel road, and riding next to me was the greatest love I’d ever felt - she was a rotund Native American woman.

  • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 days ago

    Yeah, oddly enough, that Rick & Morty ep hit home. Of all the things, that one hooked me. 🤷🏽‍♂️

    • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgOP
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      17 days ago

      I’ve never watched that show, could you please elaborate or give me the episode number so I can look up the synopsis?

      • otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        17 days ago

        Sorry, the one that play a video game that’s an entire life of some other random schmuck. I’m not sure if the episode number or season, but there was another where they revisited the idea, IIRC.

          • deus@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            That’s the arcade one. The other one is probably season 4, episode 8, “The Vat of Acid Episode”. Morty gets a real-life saving device that allows him to go back to any previous moment in time where he has defined a save. He then falls in love with a girl and lives a long time happily with her, and forgets about the saving device. Eventually, he accidentally goes back to the save point he had made and realized he has lost the relationship with the girl and is again a complete stranger to her. That one hits hard.

  • durfenstein@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Yes, once. I was incredibly heartbroken and confused for three days. It sparked me going onto dating apps. Where i found my dream wife.

  • e0qdk@reddthat.com
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    17 days ago

    I’m not sure if I’ve ever fallen in love with a completely imaginary dream person, but I did dream about my ex once years and years after we broke up. I don’t remember what I dreamed about exactly, but I do remember waking from it. The happiness fading as the realization set in that it was all a dream – I was by myself in bed and none of it had been real. I’m usually pretty good at dealing with solitude, but that moment… that was the most intense loneliness I think I’ve ever felt.

  • Eiri@lemmy.ca
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    17 days ago

    Oh yeah often. But there’s a decent proportion of my dreams where I’m not me; just some sort of fictional my brain made up for that night.

    And about 80% of the time, if there’s romance in a dream, it’s not me. My brain has trouble fathoming a romantic story with me in it and I can’t fault it for it.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Yeah, once or twice.

    It’s really disturbing, and I generally dislike them because of the emotional leftovers.

    The emotion is real, and the worst part is that it tends to stick around. Most dreams you just forget. But for some reason the one or two of these I’ve experienced it has left a longing and a desire to sort of go back to that dream, the person in it, the level of feeling I got, which of course is impossible. I have a family and love them all, so I don’t know why my brain threw this at me. It’s not like I’m lonely.

    I wonder what the psychology and brain chemistry is with that. Why your brain makes up the person, the feelings, and why it sticks around when all the other dreams generally vanish.

  • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    I have vivid dreams to the point I’ve had to mourn entire lives that were never even real.

    Like Roy from Rick and Morty.

    The worst ones are when it was a very fulfilling life and then I have to wake up and accept it never actually happened.

    • SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      If I may ask, what was an example of a detail of that fulfilling life? And is it not possible to attain in this one?

      • ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        A life without all the trauma and self harm. A life where I had all the support I needed to actually thrive and make something of myself. Sometimes it’s just a life with a past love where everything turned out okay. Other times a life where I chose a more profitable career because I didn’t need chaos to feel normalcy.

        I’m a very broken individual so it’s not really hard for me to dream up a scenario that’s infinitely better than my reality.

        That’s part of what hurts so bad waking up and realizing I’m back in my own life.

  • Richard@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Definitely. Not often, but when I had them, they were strong and affected me for the remainder of the day.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    17 days ago

    Got no time for love in my dreams - I’m busier with tomato fights, becoming a pig, running from a T-Rex, watching aliens to spit on a tree to wilt it down, and killing a person to resurrect an ancient god.

  • theedqueen@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    Not fell in love per se but I had a dream I was getting married and it was clear my partner and I were really in love. There was a sense of happiness I felt that made the dream feel so real. Was sad when I woke up.

  • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
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    17 days ago

    Yes. In a dream, I fell in love with someone I know in real life now. It was psychologically disruptive. In the dream, we’d loved each other for thousands of years. The emotions did not end upon waking and persist to today to some extent.

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    17 days ago

    This is one of my most common dreams now. When I was younger it was wild sex dreams. Now it’s literally just meeting my dream woman and it goes smoothly.