Very unsettling dream

[ShatnersWigIsActuallyAMammoth]

I had a dream last night and it's left me extremely unsettled and upset. I almost never remember dreams but this one has really kicked me in the head.

Long story short, my first girlfriend was killed in a car crash when she was 20 and I was 19. It obviously completely devastated me. I've had two long term relationships since (22-25 and 26-36) but have been single for nine years and am 45.

I don't tend to think of her that often now, on her birthday and on the date of the accident mainly. But last night I was dreaming of being at a wedding reception as a guest but was sat at the back of the hall next to old school friend (not seen in 20 years) and couldn't see who the bride was. Eventually the bride and groom got up to cut the cake and it was her.

It's 26 years ago, why the hell has this popped into my head like this and left me feeling really upset? I know there's no actual answer, I just needed to get this out somewhere.

Im sorry for your loss. It must have been devastating for you. Was she happy in the dream? It's the sort of thing that had she lived, might have indeed happened. You might have been at her wedding by now, perhaps some unconscious part of your brain was thinking about her and almost expecting that to have happened by now or something that may happen.

Perhaps it might help doing something to commemorate her memory? Losses do stay with us and can pop up unexpectedly.

OP, I wonder if how your dream has left you feeling is the significant aspect of its message? You mention being "extremely unsettled and upset" and please ignore this if I'm wrong but I thought I also picked up on some angry indignation ("Why the hell..?")

From my point of view, it would be perfectly natural and understandable to feel furious at life for taking your girlfriend so brutally while you were both essentially still teenagers. And if you're able to reflect on what you went through in the aftermath of her death, do you recall feeling particularly angry about the 'existential' injustice of losing her? If not, there might be some unfinished emotional processing that your deeper self would like you to do before you can truly move on from your loss all these years later. Part of the theory of the unconscious is that it doesn't recognise time in the way that we consciously think of it. So it's very likely that feelings from your younger self still exist in your unconscious psyche. Since you're now pretty much middle-aged but unmarried it's also possible that your unconscious is signalling to you that the impact of losing your partner in such a disturbing way went deeper than you realise and has affected how you feel about committment to intimate relationships/partnerships now. If you're not encouraged and facilitated to work through more emotional closure on that experience of devastating loss, your deeper self may be concerned that you'll lose opportunities to enjoy lasting commitment in the second (and last) half of your life.

It's in that sense that you might interpret the scenario. A friend you haven't seen since your twenties (younger self) is sitting next to you, and you're at the back (could represent the past). Perhaps your emotional development ran into difficulties back then that affected your relationships since? Again, just a suggestion that might ring some (wedding) bells. In myth and legend there are stories where the bridegroom is 'Death' himself, and this might be another layer of meaning in your dream. Your late girlfriend never got to marry you because, metaphorically speaking, Death claimed her as his bride, thereby robbing you of any possibility of marrying her yourself (or at least enjoying more chapters of your loving relationship). And that's possibly where the anger lies, and a deep confusion. If you had ever hoped to marry her - or make a similar long-term commitment with her - back then, that dream was stolen from you when she met her tragic death. Jealousy is a form of anger, and at a primordial feeling level it's perfectly rational to feel such rage and injustice in those circumstances. Chances are, though, that at that time you weren't helped to acknowledge those feelings and work them through more completely. As I mentioned earlier, that could still be holding you back emotionally now in a vital sense. A loss like that is traumatic, leaving you shocked to the core. That has ramifications for your emotional health after the fact that might not have been satisfactorily resolved for you.

Apologies if I've made assumptions here that don't land well with you. I don't wish to add to your distress. On the other hand, the deeply unsettled and upset feelings signal to me that your psyche is still trying to make sense of the loss you suffered, with the aim of healing you at an emotional level that would leave you free to move forward more 'openly', so that you can regain some lost trust in life and relationships. The work of that is already underway because you've actually felt something powerful as a result of the disturbing imagery of your dream. In my experience that's a big part of how we ultimately heal from emotional trauma. Just feeling the unresolved feelings can be powerfully liberating. If you ever tried not to feel them at the time (eg. with booze) then your unconscious is bringing them up in the unguarded zone of sleep, and my guess is it's doing that now because you'll feel more able to form another significant and 'successful' relationship as a result.

What the hell was just a phrase, no anger at all.

Sure. And thanks for responding So hard not to make dream work sound presumptuous and wanky!

For years bereavement recovery was modelled on the 5 stages of grief, which you might've heard of. Anger was one of the stages, bargaining was another, and acceptance was kind of the 'final stage' (which assumed you'd worked through all the others successfully). These days bereavement work is based more on a dual model in which you process your feelings and emotions about your loss while also doing stuff that keeps your life moving forward. The thinking there is that it helps you to avoid getting stuck in difficult feelings for too long. In many ways you've done that work since your loss all those years ago, including having other intimate relationships. It's my understanding, however, that dreams which stir up powerful feelings about past grief have a point to make that will ultimately give you back something you lost in the process.

I think you've been massively brave to put your dream and feelings down in black and white. I hope very much that you'll recover from the uneasiness and find some peace with the loss again.