Erotic dreams are a universal experience – they don’t choose gender, age, emotional status, or life circumstances. Neurosurgeon Dr. Raul Jandial explains that they are not random but part of the brain’s natural activity during the REM phase of sleep, and their message is often far more complex than a mere reflection of our desires. The source of dreams is the same as all mental activity – waves of electricity moving through the brain every moment we are alive. Dreams are a product of normal brain function and the extraordinary transformation that occurs every night as we sleep, following circadian rhythms – day-night cycles – that biologically govern our entire lives.
Every night, our brains and bodies follow a 90-minute light sleep cycle that repeats, followed by deep sleep, where brain waves are slow and rhythmic. The eyes begin to roll under the eyelids and most muscles in the body become paralyzed. When the eyes vibrate beneath the eyelids, this is known as rapid eye movement, or REM sleep.
Dreams Change as the Night Progresses
Early morning dreams usually include more elements from our waking lives. Dreams at the end of the night are more likely to be emotional and include older autobiographical memories, and we are most likely to remember those dreams we dream just before waking.
The tenor of our dreams also changes. Dreams are more negative at the beginning of the night and become more positive as the night goes on. Dreams deeply affect us because we experience them as real. The joy we feel in dreams is physiologically no different from the joy of wakefulness, nor are horror, frustration, sexual arousal, anger, or fear.
Running in dreams activates the motor cortex, the same part of your brain you would use for actual running. Feeling a lover’s touch in a dream stimulates the sensory cortex just as if you were awake. Erotic dreams are part of human nature. You couldn’t stop them even if you wanted to.
They don’t stop with menopause or chemical castration. It doesn’t matter whether you are sexually active, celibate, married, or single. Erotic dreams are universal.
They can leave us flushed with pleasure or filled with jealousy. They are often disturbing. What does it mean to have a sexual dream about your ex? What if your partner dreams erotically about someone else? Do they reveal something about our true desires?
We All Cheat in Dreams
Singles have a higher frequency of erotic dreams than men in stable relationships. On the other hand, women report more sexual dreams when they miss their partners or are at the peak of their relationships, while men do not report a similar increase in these scenarios.
But there is one way in which men’s and women’s dream lives align – almost all of us cheat in our dreams. So what should we do with this?
As the creators of our dreams, we choose the cast, the scene, and the plot of our nightly dramas. The dreams we conjure are our own sensual productions.
So isn’t a dream in which we cheat on our partner a sign that we want to be unfaithful, or at least open to it?
Certainly, an erotic dream is our unfiltered and unleashed libido. If not, what else could it be? All dreams are the product of the brain’s “imagination network,” not bound by the rules and logic of waking life.
When we dream, imagination is unrestrained, free to find loose associations and connections in our memories. It can lead us to think about people in our lives in surprising, disturbing, and even erotic ways.
In erotic dreams, we are free to imagine sexual encounters that would be taboo or unimaginable in our waking lives. They are unlikely to include our current partner. Instead, we have a much greater tendency toward bisexuality and new sexual interactions in general.
So what do erotic dreams actually mean?
Researchers have conducted surveys on sexual activity, examining how happy people are in their romantic relationships, whether they have jealous personalities, and how these characteristics affect their dreams. They even tried to induce erotic dreams by asking participants to watch adult films. What they found was surprising.
Erotic dreams are not tied to how often you have sex or whether you masturbate.
They are not even linked to how much pornography you consume. The best predictor of erotic dreaming seems to be how much time we spend in waking life fantasizing erotically. That makes us more open to erotic dreams at night.
However, there is one crucial difference between daydreaming and erotic dreams. When we fantasize during the day, these erotic thoughts are controlled by the rational part of the brain, the executive network, which restricts sexual desire. This moderating influence disappears when we dream, allowing our erotic dreams to be wildly creative and exploratory.
Erotic dreams not only reflect or release our emotions, imagination, and libido. They can provide pleasure as intense as real sex. They may even be better.
In erotic dreams, the brain receives no tactile signals. Erotic dreams occur only in the brain. Yet, more than two-thirds of men and more than one-third of women say they have experienced orgasm solely as a result of a dream. Without any sensory input, the brain creates and perceives bodily pleasure.
Sex and other erotic pleasures we experience in dreams feel the same to us because, as far as the brain is concerned, there is no difference. The brain doesn’t distinguish between real or false orgasms; to the brain, all are real.
And since our unrestrained emotional system during dreaming can surpass the levels we reach while awake, it is reasonable to conclude that orgasm in a dream can take us to heights that waking sex cannot.
What Do Erotic Dreams Reveal About Our Relationships?
Science suggests that dreams of infidelity are unlikely to mean we want to be unfaithful. Cheating on a partner in a dream may simply be a sign of curiosity and normal sexual arousal, not a desire to withdraw from the relationship.
Even dreams in which we explore a different sexual orientation are not a sign of secret or repressed desire, but rather of curiosity, libido, and imagination.
Nevertheless, erotic dreams have much to tell us about the health of our current romantic relationships and how well we have moved on from our exes, though perhaps not in the way we would expect.
Erotic dreams can provoke strong feelings of desire, jealousy, love, sadness, or joy intense enough to affect how we feel about our partner the next day. As feelings in a dream, the brain experiences emotions as real. Researchers have found that conflict with a partner in a dream often results in conflict the following day.
In Unhealthy Relationships, Dreams Especially Affect the Bond
In unhealthy relationships, dreams of infidelity are associated with reduced feelings of love and intimacy in the following days. In healthy relationships, such dreams have little effect. How we feel about our partner while awake can also influence our dreams. Jealousy during the day can produce dreams of infidelity, which in turn influence behavior toward the partner.
It is very likely that negative emotions in an erotic dream about a partner can serve as an important signal about how you feel toward that person. But the emotions connected to erotic dreams are much more important than the storyline of the dream itself.
If you or your partner dream of being unfaithful, it is not a sign of anyone’s true desires.
Although you may wake up upset, remember that dreams are designed to make us think differently, including about our sex lives. What truly matters is not our erotic dream story or our partner’s, but how we react to those dreams.
Ex-partners can appear – and do appear – in dreams long after they are no longer part of our lives. While dreams about current partners often involve doing something together, dreams about exes are more likely to be erotic. You might be tempted to conclude this means we still long for our exes. But based on numerous studies, the opposite is usually true. These dreams seem to help us get over our former partners. They may simply be a way of processing emotions after a breakup.
Our brains have evolved to be highly attuned to erotic thinking. Fantasy, erotic daydreaming – and ultimately our sexuality – stem from the fundamental drive to reproduce, reports Večernji.hr.
