How often do you have nightmares/sleepless nights about ex's?

[ponchsox]

The mind is a powerful thing! Last night sucked

[gaius]

Never as far back as I can remember. Whenever they show up in my dreams I always sleep longer because I don't want to wake up.

 

The last sleepless night I can remember was after Commander Sheppard died and the universe got destroyed in Mass Effect 3. That hit my psyche harder than any ex ever did.

[Raena]

Just some thoughts and ideas of what I do to help make this not happen:

 

I take a hot bath or shower, then some melatonin and a droning documentary about something boring on the tv. I also make my bed as comfortable as possible and spray some febreze night time spray (milk and honey) around my room. It works like a charm to ward off sleepless nights filled with nasty dreams about the ex.

 

Make your bedroom your sanctuary.

 

Another thing that helps sometimes too is to exercise. Keep your day busy, busy, busy so that when you go to bed, you are very tired.

 

It doesn't always work but most of the time it does.

[ponchsox]

Just some thoughts and ideas of what I do to help make this not happen:

 

I take a hot bath or shower, then some melatonin and a droning documentary about something boring on the tv. I also make my bed as comfortable as possible and spray some febreze night time spray (milk and honey) around my room. It works like a charm to ward off sleepless nights filled with nasty dreams about the ex.

 

Make your bedroom your sanctuary.

 

Another thing that helps sometimes too is to exercise. Keep your day busy, busy, busy so that when you go to bed, you are very tired.

 

It doesn't always work but most of the time it does.

 

Good ideas, except for the Febreze rubbing one out seems to help me too.

[Always Pondering]

Funny enough I just woke up about 20 minutes ago and I had one. It wasn't a sleepless night or a nightmare, I was just trying to help jump start someone's car in front of her house for some reason. Nothing special though, I'll probably forget about it within the next hour.

 

I used to have nightmares but that was only right after BU and also the amount of dreams with her in it have greatly decreased since then. I went from nightmares and dreams almost every night to only dreams about once a month or two.

 

I can't wait to be able to not have one for over half a year at least though.

[iris219]

How long has your relationship been over?

 

Nightmares and sleeplessness seems like something that would only happen right after the break up.

[Jaaded]

Ugh. I ended my relationship with my ex 4 years ago and I still have two nightmares that involve him. The relationship was extremely scary and volatile at the end...mainly because he lost his ***** when I finally left him. (Stalked me for months, tried breaking into my new apartment, tried to isolate me from friends and family, etc).

 

In the first one, I dream that he is standing over me as I lay in bed. He starts screaming at me and yanks me upright. I always wake up sitting straight up in bed...shaking and drenched in sweat.

 

In the second, I am pregnant out at in a public place with my fiancé. My ex appears in the crowd and starts to walk towards me. My fiancé doesn't notice him approaching and I try to get closer to him for protection. Somehow my ex always reaches me before I can move and he tries to reach out to touch my pregnant belly. I try to turn away from him and look around in a panic for my fiancé. I always end up waking up before my ex makes contact with me.

 

It's sick how this disgusting excuse for a man still manages to torment me years later....

[acrosstheuniverse]

I have a feeling that as well as ordering and processing real life events, dreams are your mind's way of testing out new scenarios so that you'll be better able to cope if they come true. For example, when I'm in a happy relationship I'll often have nightmares that we're breaking up, or that I or they have cheated. A common dream of mine (maybe once or twice a year but for several years) is that I have cheated on a partner and now I have to tell them, even though I adore them, hate myself and am terrified they leave me. In those dreams I'm not present for the cheating part, nor do I know who it's even with, just a vague sense that in the recent pre-dream past I've been unfaithful. I've never been unfaithful to anyone in real life because I know I wouldn't be able to keep it to myself and it would destroy or seriously damage my relationship so having cheated is one of my biggest nightmares! Waking up from one of those dreams with my boyfriend sleeping next to me or snuggling me and realising none of it is real is one of the most amazing feelings of relief.

 

Or when I've just split from someone and I was really happy with them and it has come out of the blue and I'm devastated, I'll dream we're happy and together again. That's an awful dream, one of the worst feelings I've ever had. Waking up from bliss to find you're all alone and you had a messy, nasty split... kicks you right in the gut.

 

On the whole though, exes don't play a massive significant part in my dream world at all.

[Targetlock]

I sometimes have ones about a girl who I had a crush on who I used to work with and never asked out