I think that you're going thru a stressful time - you said you have some financial worries - and your mind is going back to a more carefree time, when you weren't financially, or any way else, responsible for your first love.
You're in real life now. Pull up your big boy pants and deal with it.
Don't call the other girl after all this time. She has her own life to live, and you have yours.
One thing: you're probably fueling the dreams by looking at the pictures. As in, one of the things we all dream about are recent events and repetitious things. E. g. when I was a teenager I worked as a switchboard operator and for months I used to have dreams where, no matter what I was doing, I was also answering a telephone.
So quit looking at the pictures. Grab a camera and take your own pictures. Of your wife, your home, the neighbor's dog, whatever. Find other things to do during the time you'd normally be looking at the pictures, whether it's checking out sports or reading a book or winterizing the car.
This will help. It won't fix everything, to be sure, but the dreams are giving you certain feelings and then you are fueling the feelings while looking at the photos and reminiscing and then that fuels more dreams which fuels more reminiscing and around and around we go. Break the cycle of reinforcement and you'll help to break the quick chemical madness you're trying to -- whether consciously or unconsciously -- conjure up about this woman.
Lots of people think about their past and that's certainly what class reunions and whatnot are for. But this is different and you know it. Take some control and don't just let it happen. You've got a good marriage and while your intentions may not be to mess with it you're not helping things by ratcheting up the nostalgia.
Oh, and welcome to A2K.
I agree strongly about Jespah's advice.
My own take on dreams fits along with Sozobe's post about them, being random synapse events that the brain makes a story of. Sometimes present activities get mixed up with old friends and acquaintances. Like Jespah's telephone answering dreams, I've designed irrigation plans in my sleep, and that is truly irritating - an aggravating enough task in the daytime hours. Well, computer programs do it now, but then didn't back in my design years. My point is, I had those activity dreams at the same time in my life as I did those activities.
On people though - as a generalization, I tend to dream only about people from somewhere in the past - as if that random synapse business is "spitting out" old material in some kind of clearance process, or filing mechanism.
I've been dreaming of a lover from around 1970 off and on this year, and it's been kind of fun.
Sometimes a dream is just a dream....
Hey, I have strange dreams. Recently, a naked dream about my Ex and not my current man.
Sometimes, for some reason I've never been able to figure out, about a co-worker who I would never!
And yes, the random dream about the first love.
Do I really want any of these people? NO!
And I happy in the relationship I'm in? Yes!
It's just a dream. Sometimes they pretend to mean something, sometimes they seem very real, but they are just your brain entertaining itself while you sleep.
Listen to Jespah and put those photos away!
It's NOT helping.
I've had a couple of dreams like yours lately and I feel so guilty too... because I know I LOVE my husband and there is nobody else I want to be with..
but as they say dreams is the unconscious speaking... I am afraid to admit maybe I was thinking of the "what if" so much during the hard times in my marriage.. like when I am mad at my in laws, feeling helpless about our financial situation.
Its just a dream... that is whats important.. and now you must make a CONSCIOUS decision NOT to act on calling her..
Oh please people. I once had a dream that I was making love with Barbara Stanwyck.
And Barbara was dreaming about you, too, eoe:
AND it was the white-haired Barbara Stanwyck from "Big Valley"!
The archetypal strong but elegant woman.
She's been in my dreams too, eoe. But I wasn't making love to her. <snort>
I was busy...with Telly Savalas.
What can I say? I'm sure I'd probably gone to bed that night either very drunk or very, very stoned. It was the 80's, a decade of non-stop partying for me! For alot of us, I'm sure.
We've hijacked our original posters thread.
Please accept my apologies and continue.
My only point was, dreams are sometimes way too goofy to try and read anything into.
