Last night I had a dream, where I had moved into a new apartment and was trowing a party. There were loads of guest - old bosses and business people from the past, as well as colleagues from my current job. In comes my ex-boyfriend from 6 years back. He looks the same, but the way he talks and acts is very different from reality. He is behaving very bombastically, and seem overly pleased to see me. He hugs and kisses me and I pretend to play along, saying that we will never part again etc. whilst I am still blinking over my shoulders, signaling to one of my male guests that I am lying. (The male guest is a person from awake life that I had a fling with not very long ago.)

Then suddenly I am at the airport with yet another ex-boyfriend from the past. We have tickets to go to Italy. We also have false passports. Then I notice that the woman in front of us in line have the same name as I do, in my new fake identity. I open my passport to the photo page and notice that the glue used to attach the photo of me in somebody else's passport has stuck to the opposite page, tearing away my face from the photo. I show it to my ex-boyfriend Patrick and he says; "We cannot go now. We cannot get away and it is very difficult for someone like me to get another identity."

Both dream sequences leaves me feeling intense sadness and panic, concerning letting these two ex-boyfriends down.

But I knew these men so long ago, why do I still dream so intensely about them and what are such important persons from the past trying to say? Italy, why Italy - it means nothing to me!

In the first part of the dream, you ex takes on another personae. In the second part, you are the one whose identity has been changed.

Do you feel that either you are trapped falling in love with the same type of man, or do you feel you must conform to what they want you to be?

Hi,

You are right in noting that the main theme of both episodes seems to be identities: changed identity, false identity or changed personality.

I also think that it has something to do with letting go of the past or leaving the past behind. In the first part of the dream with the "changed" ex-boyfriend, the thing I remember the clearest is communicating to the male guest (the man I think I am falling in love with presently - in awake life) that I am only pretending to be getting back together with my ex, because I don't want to upset my ex's feelings. That idea about sparing my ex-boyfriend's feeelings must be something going on in my subconscious, because in awake life I don't even have any contact with my ex and I don't think he would care at all who ever I would be seeing. And no, I don't think that this new man is anything alike any of my ex boyfriends; Quite the opposite, really.

At the airport when my other ex-boyfriend says that "its difficult for someone like me to get another identity" , I forgot to tell you my own answer that I gave in the dream. I remember saying; "No, not at all. You just buy one." I suppose the entire dream could be about guilt, leaving my past self behind and taking on a "new identity". I used to be quite wild, living in musician circles, traveling around when I was younger and the last 7 years I have become something of a model citizen, responsible, a lawyer workaholic etc. I think the intense sadness is not necessary about my ex boyfriends, but about the person I used to be. Much freer, daring, brave and more relaxed.