Having Dreams About Your Boyfriend Cheating? Here’s What It Means

Picture this: It’s the middle of the night, you’re tucked into bed, fast asleep, and your mind has wandered away to some far off dreamland. Before you know it, a friendly face pops into your dream: your boyfriend. Maybe you’re sitting across from him at a vaguely familiar restaurant, or maybe you’re in the car together, zooming down the highway, or maybe you’re cuddled up on the couch with him.

Things start off normally enough, but soon, your dream takes a left turn into uncharted territory. You might catch a flirty text pop up on his phone from someone named Isabella, or you might receive a “hey girl” message from a pretty girl on Instagram, or he might solemnly tell you that there’s something he needs to confess to you, or you might walk in on him with another girl. Whatever the circumstances are, the outcome is the same: You find out that your boyfriend has been cheating on you.

A wave of rage washes over you. You can feel the betrayal in your bones. You’re in utter agony. You scream, cry, and say you want to break up. And then, just as quickly as this sickening storyline entered your dream, your eyes flutter open. You have a few disorienting moments of, “Wait, was any of that real, or was I dreaming?” 

Your heart slows down to a normal pace as you take a few deep breaths to calm yourself. While you realize that none of that actually happened, that you didn’t really discover your boyfriend is cheating, the emotions you were experiencing just a minute ago still feel very real to you – and for the rest of the day, you struggle to shake them, to dismiss them. 

The next time you see your boyfriend, you can’t help but feel off. The rational side of you understands that dreams can be strange and unpredictable and convoluted, but another side of you can’t ignore the questions that keep on rearing their ugly heads: What did the dream mean? Should you pay attention to your dream, or should you sweep it under your mind’s rug? Was it some kind of premonition? Your subconscious trying to warn you? What if he has been cheating on you, and you’ve been ignoring the signs?

Why Do We Interpret Dreams?

We’ve all heard it said that our dreams are indicative of something deeper going on in our subconscious. Annie Wright, a licensed therapist based in Berkeley, California, shared with Evie: “Early on, folks like Freud and Jung had their own takes – Freud thought dreams were about our hidden desires, while Jung believed they helped balance our inner conflicts.”

According to Freud, our dreams are brimming with what psychologists refer to as “latent content,” or, in other words, hidden meanings and desires that are tucked and hidden away in the closets and floorboards of our unconscious mind. “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind,” Freud said in his The Interpretation of Dreams. While our conscious minds are better able to push away thoughts that we might deem unacceptable, uncomfortable, or troubling without necessarily realizing it, our unconscious mind allows them to flow freely.

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung, a colleague of Freud’s, also felt that our dreams had a certain significance, thanks to what he saw as their candidness. “Dreams are impartial, spontaneous products of the unconscious psyche, outside the control of the will. They are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished, natural truth, and are therefore fitted, as nothing else is, to give us back an attitude that accords with our basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundations and run into an impasse,” he stated in Volume 10 of his Collected Works.

Do Dreams Actually Mean Anything?

So are our dreams actually overflowing with hidden meanings, wishes, and desires? Are they all really worth interpreting? Or are they nothing more than an absurd, meaningless stream of random thoughts and images, and to pay them any mind would be to blow everything way out of proportion?

There are varying opinions on this. Kristen Beesely, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst based in Detroit and faculty member at the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, has witnessed her students realize the hidden meaning behind their dreams many a time. “In a class I teach on dream interpretation, students are asked to bring in their own dreams to analyze. Every time a student presents a dream, something similar happens. As they begin to analyze their dreams, they describe the process as ‘unnerving.’ They thought they were bringing meaningless dreams to class, but the dreams end up having important and relevant information about what is currently going on in their life – and about their wishes and desires. Each student discovers that their dreams are not just random, but have important meaning,” Beesley wrote in Psychology Today.

On the other hand, Wright says that dreams aren’t always that significant: “Think of dreams like a collage of your day-to-day experiences, emotions, and even those deep-seated thoughts you might not be fully aware of. The world of dream research is really fascinating and still evolving. … Nowadays, scientists are looking more at how our brains work when we dream, suggesting dreams might not always be profound messages but could be our brain’s way of processing daily life or just random thoughts. So, while some dreams could indeed be a window into deeper aspects of ourselves, others might just be our brain doing its nightly tidying up!”

What Could a Dream About Your Boyfriend Cheating Mean?

So, sometimes our dreams mean something, and other times, we’d be wasting our time trying to dig too much meaning out of them. It would make sense that the dream you had about splitting a basket of fries with Blake Lively isn’t worth reflecting too deeply on. But what about the dream you had about your boyfriend cheating on you?

Here’s what Wright had to say about it: “Dreaming about a partner cheating doesn’t necessarily mean something’s amiss in your relationship. These dreams often reflect our own insecurities or worries – maybe about trust, self-worth, or even broader life anxieties. It’s like your mind is using the dream to play out fears or concerns you might have, and not always about your partner. Understanding these dreams is more about looking at what’s happening in your life and your feelings rather than taking the dream as a literal prediction or reflection of reality.”

Well, that’s comforting, to say the least. What a cheating dream might point to more than anything else is something that’s going on for you rather than your relationship. Maybe you’ve been cheated on before and you’re worried about it happening again. Or maybe your struggles with low self-esteem cause you to assume that your boyfriend will one day come across someone else who catches his eye. Or maybe it’s difficult for you to fully trust people, and since you’re starting to really fall for your boyfriend, your mind is jumping to the worst case scenario. Or maybe you’ve felt distant from your boyfriend lately, and this dream indicates concerns that you’re “losing” him somehow. Or maybe something about the relationship is making you feel unsettled.

What Should You Do If You Have This Dream?

At this point, you’re probably starting to breathe a little easier. You know now that your dream doesn’t necessarily point to real-life infidelity on your boyfriend’s part. In fact, it likely doesn’t. But you’re still feeling shaken. You still feel uneasy, unsettled, and wary. And more than anything else, you just want things with your boyfriend to go back to the way they were before that terrible dream. So what can you do?

Here’s what Wright suggests: “Keeping a dream journal is a great start to more practically manage what’s showing up in dreams. It helps you track themes and emotions that pop up in your dreams. Think about what’s going on in your life, as this context can be a big clue in understanding your dreams.” So maybe you shouldn’t limit your journaling to what happens while you’re awake?

“There’s also something called lucid dreaming,” says Wright, “where you know you’re dreaming and can sometimes guide the dream. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re interested, it starts with being more aware of your dreams. Some people change their sleep patterns slightly, like waking up a bit earlier, to help remember and maybe even influence their dreams. But remember, everyone’s dream experience is unique!” An intriguing suggestion – and one that could allow you to have more control over your dreams.

Additionally, if you find that your dream could be linked to an inner struggle (low self-esteem, for example), you could consider finding a counselor to work through these issues with. And if it becomes clear that your dreams were triggered by a relational issue that you want to address, consider ways that you might reestablish a close connection with your boyfriend, whether by prioritizing quality time or having an honest conversation about the real-life issue at hand.

Closing Thoughts

Take heart, dreamer. Your cheating dream most likely isn’t reflective of reality. But still, this type of dream can point to issues going on either in your own mind/life, or in the relationship, that can and should be remedied. 

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