Everyone has heard jokes and memes about someone’s girlfriend or wife overreacting because she had a dream about her man cheating on her. What a lot of people don’t realize, however, is just how incredibly common the opposite is too – a man dreaming about his girlfriend or wife cheating on him and losing his mind.
The sheer fact that set out to write this article should tell you how often that happens. So, what does the dreaded dream about your girlfriend cheating on you mean? Here are the 11 most common interpretations we’ve found.
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What does a dream about your girlfriend cheating mean?
The cheating dream is exceptionally common in relationships, even when things are going relatively well. Obviously, this isn’t some type of “prophetic dream” and just because you dreamt about your girlfriend cheating on you, that doesn’t mean that she really is having an affair.
What does it mean, however? Usually, it’s an indication that there’s something amiss in the emotions or dialogue between you, or it simply indicates that you have some issues that you need to work on yourself.
So, to give you some pointers as to which options and interpretations you might want to look at first, here are the 11 most common meanings of a dream about your girlfriend cheating on you.
1. There likely is quite a bit of mistrust between the two of you
By definition, if you’re dreaming that your partner is cheating on you, that means that you don’t trust them to be faithful. Whether or not that lack of trust is justified from your partner’s side may or may not be the case. In fact, such trust issues usually go both sides.
So, the worry here shouldn’t so much be that your partner is cheating on you but rather that there isn’t enough trust in your relationship. This interpretation is so common and definitional that it applies in basically 100% of the cases, even when any of the other interpretations below is also true together with it.
2. You may have self-esteem and insecurity issues
Another exceptionally common interpretation of such a dream is that you have low self-esteem and feelings of insecurity. This isn’t necessarily true 100% of the time as you can have fears of your partner cheating on you even when you’re so full of yourself that you’re a borderline narcissist.
Yet, very often it is true that people have dreams of infidelity because they don’t feel that they are worthy of their partner’s faithfulness. If you think that’s the case for you, that’s definitely something to talk to a therapist about – not feeling that you’re worthy of love is one of the fastest ways to be left alone and unloved.
3. You don’t feel satisfied in the relationship and have been thinking about cheating or leaving yourself
If you have a dream of cheating, this can be a likely symptom that you too have been feeling unhappy in the relationship and have been thinking of leaving or cheating.
It’s a very common defense mechanism for people to start imagining and even wishing that their partner would cheat on them so that they’d have the “excuse” of leaving or cheating on them back. This can feel silly and it is obviously flawed logic but it’s incredibly common and, in a way, understandable.
Needless to say, if this applies to you, you need to take urgent action to either repair or end your relationship – further neglect is usually as pointless as it is painful.
4. The dialogue in the relationship has been lacking in recent times
Bad dialogue is one of the chief underlying issues of a bad relationship. It’s one of those scenarios that can deteriorate previously healthy relationships incredibly fast as it breeds resentment and all sorts of unwelcome behavior that your intuition can easily interpret as signs of your partner being unfaithful to you, hence the dreams.
While this isn’t great, the good news is that bad dialogue is a fairly straightforward problem to fix, although it usually requires the assistance of a couples therapist.
5. You’ve been cheated on before and you haven’t overcome the trauma yet
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The sting of betrayal is one of the slowest wounds to heal and it’s very easy to transfer that anxiety and trauma onto your current relationship if you’ve been a victim of disloyalty before. Such nightmares can plague you for years and even decades after your ex-partner has done what they have done.
As understandable as it is, however, it’s not fair to your current partner to transfer the baggage from a past relationship into your current one.
So, if you’ve got a dream of your partner cheating and you know that you’ve been cheated on before, the smart thing to do usually is to try and solve this trust issue for yourself with the help of a therapist before you’ve damaged your current relationship with past trauma. Remember that self-fulfilling prophecies are a thing and they can undermine a relationship incredibly fast.
6. You have abandonment issues
Similarly to some of the above examples, a fear of abandonment is something that can easily lead to this kind of dream and it can also require quite a bit of therapy to deal with properly.
As helpful as our subconscious mind can be at times, it can also play tricks on us sometimes, and this is a prime example of that. If you have abandonment issues and you’re having such dreams because of them, it may very well be that your relationship is actually going near-perfectly well but you are on the verge of sabotaging it because you have such unresolved pain from years ago.
7. There is a certain someone you feel has been standing between the two of you – even if no cheating has happened yet
A common situation for a lot of people is that there is indeed a “third wheel” person in the vicinity of the relationship that your partner hasn’t cheated on you yet but who is making you feel uncomfortable and is triggering lots of feelings of jealousy in you.
Sometimes such jealousy is justified, other times – it’s not. Either way, your dreams of being cheated on can easily come from such a situation so it’s a good idea to try and clear the air between you and your partner in a clear and well-communicated way to fix the problem.
8. You need to bring the relationship to its next step
Often, we find ourselves in a relationship that’s going pretty well – it’s stable, both of you are faithful, and there is room to grow. And, ironically, that last part is sometimes the problem for some of us – when there is room to grow but the relationship hasn’t moved to its next stage yet.
This is a peculiar “problem” to have because it’s not actually a problem but it still leads to nasty dreams about infidelity. In a way, the dreams here are hints for your waking life – a clue that it’s time to take the next step as there is no sense not to.
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9. Other things in your life haven’t been going well and you’re projecting those issues onto your relationship
A very common issue for men, in particular, but for many women too, is that we often find ourselves in denial about certain issues in our lives and, instead, we project our underlying stress and unhappiness onto our relationship.
It may be that we hate our jobs or we don’t feel well about our lifestyle, but, because we’re in stubborn denial about it, our subconscious transfers this stress into suspicion about our relationships. Needless to say, this is neither healthy nor is it fair to our partners.
10. You have been unfaithful to your partner
An even more obvious case of projection is the situation where we’ve been unfaithful in the past – whether to our current partner or to a previous one – and, instead of dealing with these feelings of guilt, we are projecting them on our partner by suspecting them of the same.
After all, if we are victims of the same crime as the one we’ve committed, the two crimes will “cancel each other out”, right? Obviously not. Still, it’s easy to fall victim to this logical flaw and it’s smart to try to deal with it as quickly and as healthily as possible.
11. You may be picking on some signs that your partner is indeed cheating on you in your real life
Lastly, there is indeed the risk that you are the victim of actual cheating. It may be that your subconscious mind has picked up on some signs that your partner is a cheater, and it might be that you’re even consciously aware of it. Still, it’s important not to jump to conclusions so you should always explore all other options too, and not just automatically assume the worst.
In conclusion
As you can see, simply having a dream about your girlfriend or spouse cheating doesn’t mean you should suspect them of actually doing anything behind your back. That being said, you don’t need to be a certified dream analyst to figure out that such dreams – especially when they are reoccurring – are red flags about a multitude of different possible issues.
While this is definitely not good news, the silver lining here is that most of the issues above are things we can work on. So, in a way, having such a dream Isn’t all that bad if it’s what you needed to get up and face the problems in your relationship or in your inner self.
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