Dreaming about your boyfriend cheating: what it reveals

Dreaming about your boyfriend cheating: what the dream usually shows

Dream interpretation is not prediction and not diagnosis. This article separates what sleep research observes from what popular interpretation associates with the theme, always saying which is which.

Dreaming about your boyfriend cheating is not proof that he is seeing someone else, nor a warning that he will. The dream tends to show up when the relationship is still taking shape, when there has been little talk about the future, when distance weighs on you or when you have been feeling less chosen than you would like. It also turns up after a TV series or after hearing a friend's story.

This article covers the dating version, in which nothing is signed and a lot is still worked out day by day. The broader reading of betrayal, involving friends, business partners and family, is in the main article. If you are married, you will find your version in dreaming about your husband cheating and dreaming about your wife cheating. If in the dream you were the one cheating, see dreaming about a lover.

Read also: Dreaming about betrayal and Dreaming about a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Why your boyfriend cheating turns into a dream

The continuity hypothesis, tested by Michael Schredl and Friedrich Hofmann in 2003, says that dreams use the material that filled your waking mind. In a new relationship, that material is plentiful: the question nobody has asked yet ("are we exclusive?"), his ex who still comments on his photos, the new coworker he talks about with enthusiasm, the message marked as read and left unanswered. At night, these loose pieces come together in a single scene.

In 2021, Schredl and Lisa Wood analyzed students' dream reports looking precisely at partners and ex-partners. The current partner appeared more often than the ex, as continuity predicts, and the authors concluded that dreams reflect important aspects of the relationship and also of breakups, to the point that they could be useful in psychotherapy.

There is also the effect of the dream on the following day. Dylan Selterman and colleagues found in 2014 that certain dreams about a partner, including dreams of infidelity, were associated with more conflict in the couple the next day. The bad mood of that morning may have come from the dream, and not from anything he did.

Sources: Schredl and Hofmann, Continuity between waking activities and dream activities, Consciousness and Cognition, 2003; Schredl and Wood, Partners and ex-partners in dreams, Clocks & Sleep, 2021; Selterman and colleagues, Dreaming of You, Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2014.

Cheating scenes in a relationship and what they usually go with

If the central figure was his ex, or your own ex, read dreaming about an ex and dreaming about an ex coming back. If it all started with a notification, see dreaming about a cell phone; if the other person was someone from your circle, dreaming about a friend. And when the dream ended in shouting, the reading is in dreaming about a fight or an argument.

See also: Dreaming about a mãe de santo or pai de santo and Dreaming about your daughter.

When the dream calls for a conversation, and when it calls for care

A single dream usually fades by lunchtime. It deserves attention when it comes back many times and the distrust stays awake with you: wanting to check who he talks to, questions that sound like an interrogation, arguments over details, nights of bad sleep. A conversation about what you both want from the relationship helps more than holding him to account for what he did in the dream. If insecurity shows up in all your relationships, a psychologist can help.

Look at the other side too. If the relationship involves controlling your phone, forbidding friendships, humiliation or threats, the problem is awake, not in the dream. A domestic violence hotline or support service in your area can help. If you are in intense distress, in the US you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline). And if the scene has become a frequent nightmare, see how to have fewer nightmares: nightmares can be treated.

Source: Morgenthaler and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2018.

An unfaithful boyfriend in a dream: Freud, Jung and faith

In Freud's psychoanalysis. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud observes that dreams simply disregard the category of contraries: "'No' seems not to exist" for them. A dream can represent something by its opposite, which is why you cannot tell at first glance whether an image says yes or no. Along these lines, the betrayal you dreamed may carry something else, such as the wish to be seen more or the fear that you are giving more than you receive.

In Jung's psychology. Jung suggested reading the figures in a dream also as parts of the dreamer. In that key, the boyfriend who walks away with someone else may speak of something of yours that has been drifting away: a friendship, a project, your own life, which slipped into the background once the relationship began. It is a psychological reading, not a diagnosis of the relationship.

In symbols and faith. The Song of Solomon speaks of "the little foxes, that spoil the vines" (Song of Solomon 2:15), an ancient image of the small lapses that ruin a love that is just blossoming. For people of faith, the dream can become an invitation to tend to these details together with your boyfriend, and not to turn him into a suspect.

Bringing both readings together. Research shows how routine, social media and insecurity build the scene. Psychology and faith ask what the relationship, and you, need right now. None of them gives you the right to accuse someone because of a dream.

Sources: Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900; Jung (ed.), Man and His Symbols.

The cheating boyfriend in dream books

O Livro dos Sonhos, a Brazilian dream book by L. P. Baçan, has no entry for cheating in a relationship. The entry for boyfriend says: in life, social prestige; in love, problems. The entry for kiss, a scene that often appears in these dreams, speaks of new friendships in life and of news in love. It is folk tradition, not prediction.

Freud saw these books as a code of fixed translation and pointed out that everything depends on how reliable the key is, something nobody can guarantee.

Sources: L. P. Baçan, O Livro dos Sonhos, 2014; Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 1900.

What folk belief says about a cheating boyfriend

In Brazilian folk belief, dreaming about your boyfriend cheating is often read as a sign of a solid relationship, as if the dream said the opposite of what it shows. Him with your friend would be a warning of falseness in some friendship; finding everything out through his phone, news arriving by message; him asking for forgiveness, the end of a fight; you breaking up, the courage to change something that no longer works for you. These are traditional beliefs, for reflection, not predictions. See what dream meanings look like according to science and culture.