Dreaming about someone over and over again?

[Spewkee]

Wondering if someone can help with dream meanings here?
When I was 17, I started a relationship with my first ever love and it lasted until we were 21.
I grew up in a turbulent home and I practically lived with him and his mother during this time. It was a lovely time in my life and I was very lucky to escape my parents home and have a safe place to study whilst at college and university.
He changed during our final year together though, lost weight, started up a successful business, but became very ruthless, made new friends who were quite shallow and cheated on me.
We separated, but I've never forgotten him saying to me that he thought we'd find each other again in the future. I worry that this was to keep me hooked on him; I was absolutely and completely in love with him. It was me who ended it however.
15 years on, I'm married with children and about to initiate divorce proceedings. For the last year I have dreamt about this ex boyfriend every single night. I always wake up from the dreams longing to go back to sleep, as in them, we always find ourselves back together. I maybe have fleeting thoughts about him during the day time and have done since we separated 15 years ago. I don't ever think of other boyfriends that came afterwards like I do him.
There's a fairly good chance that he's still the same smug, self-centred person that he morphed into during our final year together, but these dreams keep telling me that he isn't.
It's all quite odd.
Do I need therapy to help me get over him?
Or could there be something in these dreams?

I've done a lot of reading (and therapy) about dreams and I've come to the conclusion that the people who feature in our dreams are actually aspects of ourselves.

So one read on it might be that these dreams are you acknowledging that you want a safe place after the conclusion of a difficult relationship. It's actually a strength of yours that's emerging here, as you're getting yourself out of a relationship that isn't working for you. It's maybe just taken on the personification of someone who you saw as 'safe' during a simpler period of your life.

This is your brain asking you to be kind to yourself. My immediate thought is that it's not actually about your old boyfriend.

That's my personal and total amateur read, anyway.

Thank you for your take on my dream @NastyBlouse
I think the craving for a safe place makes complete sense to me. My ex boyfriend was my safe place/person during those years. I always felt happiest around him.

I'm longing for a safe person/place.
Sometimes my ex blurs into my current husband sometimes my husband blurs into him so perhaps I'm craving something from my husband that I used to get from my ex.

I have dreamed about an ex boyfriend for many years now

I also think of him everyday even though I have been with my current partner for 26 years!
I still fancy the pants off him.
He is on his second marriage.

I think I'm a bit bored in my relationship that's why 🤭

Yes, dreamt of an ex a lot during my unhappy marriage. We met after 17 years. There was nothing there. I had thought I “find” him again but we are too different. Have you googled him?