Con’t stop dreaming about Ex from FOREVER AGO

I’ve got no idea why this keeps happening so if anyone has an idea on why or how to make it stop that’d be great!

Back in sophomore year of highschool I had my first boyfriend. He was great and I don’t really hold anything that happened against him. He was a very kind person but a bit of a doormat because of the way he was raised.

On the other hand I’ve always been very competitive and headstrong. We ended up breaking up and although he never really gave me a clear reason for leaving I knew it was because of his family. They basically shamed him for having any physical reaction to a woman. (Just an FYI we weren’t having sex or anything like that we didn’t even kiss until months into the relationship, they shamed him once because we were holding both hands instead of one 🙄, that kind of stuff) (also I guess he got a boner once and he got scolded so badly he actually apologized to me the next day when I didn’t even know it had happened!)

Overall he was a really sweet kind person who I felt like we could have really had something under different circumstances. I’m happily married now and truly love the man I’m with. He’s been a god send and I couldn’t imagine a life without him. I’m crazy attracted to him and although we’ve had our problems they’re always minor. He really is the love of my life and that’s part of why this bothers me so much.

These dreams keep happening, more frequently than I would like, and it’s been happening for years. I’ll have a dream and he’s in it. It’s never anything intimate but just in that dream I feel like my heart aches because of how everything played out. There’s never anything sexual in the dream. Occasionally we’ll hug or hold hands. But I just get this urge to reach out to him and talk. I never do because I don’t even know if he’d reply or what we’d say. It’s been five years or more. And I feel like to dredge all of that up is a bad idea. Especially if it’s not face to face. Which is not possible as we live very far from one another.

Basically we were both each other’s first relationship, first kiss, and first break up. It was one of those times where the world stopped when I saw him, I couldn’t breath and we instantly connected. I don’t know what to do to move past this and not have these dreams anymore 😣. I know they’re innocent really but I just feel like it’s been too long for it to still be happening.