Dreaming About Your Crush: What It Means
Entry No. 161 ·
By The IF Team
What does it mean when you dream about your crush? Most often, simply that they are on your mind. Sleep researchers have found again and again that dreams pick up the people, worries and hopes that fill your waking hours, an idea known as the continuity hypothesis, so someone you think about a lot, and feel strongly about, is a natural member of the cast. A dream is not a sign that they are dreaming about you, a message from fate or a prediction. It is your own mind working over a feeling that matters to you, and that can tell you something useful about how much it matters.
If you woke up this morning thinking about someone you had barely considered yesterday, or blushing over a dream about a person you see every day, nothing about that is strange. Dreams have a way of pushing a feeling to the surface. And if the feeling is real but the timing is not, because they are with someone or you are, it can go somewhere honest. IF is for anyone, single or in a relationship, who has feelings for a person in their real life and wants to say so truthfully: the feeling goes into an IF and waits to be acted on when the time is right.
Dreams are one of the odder corners of the psychology of attraction. If the dreams come with thinking about them all day as well, why you cannot stop thinking about someone covers the waking version.
Why you dream about your crush
Dreams follow your waking life
Studies that compare dream diaries with what people do and think about during the day keep finding the same thing: much of waking life shows up in dreams, and differences between people’s days tend to show up as differences between their dreams. The dream researcher G. William Domhoff has argued that most dreams dramatise the same people and personal concerns that fill our waking thoughts — ourselves, our friends and family, our relationships. A crush is exactly that kind of concern.
Strong feelings earn a part
Not everything you did yesterday makes it into a dream. Researchers think emotional involvement helps decide what does, which is why the colleague you exchanged two words with can play a bigger role than the friend you spent the afternoon with. If you feel something intense about a person — longing, nerves, uncertainty — they are a strong candidate for a starring role.
Trying not to think about them backfires
If you have been telling yourself to stop thinking about them, that may be why they keep turning up at night. In a study by the psychologist Daniel Wegner and colleagues, people who spent five minutes before bed deliberately pushing a particular person out of their mind dreamed about that person more than people who had spent those minutes thinking about them on purpose, and the effect appeared whether or not they were attracted to that person. Suppression, it seems, keeps a thought warm.
What a crush dream does not mean
- It does not mean they are dreaming about you. There is no evidence that dreams travel from one sleeping mind to another.
- It is not a prophecy. A dream about the future is made of your hopes and fears about it.
- It is not a code. Dream dictionaries give fixed meanings to symbols, but there is no good evidence that a dream about a particular thing means the same for everyone.
- It does not oblige you to do anything at all.
Common crush dreams, and what they may reflect
No dream has a single meaning, but the themes people describe tend to track what is going on while they are awake.
They like you back
The happiest version, and usually the simplest: your mind trying out the ending you want. It can leave you buoyant all morning, and a little flat when real life has not caught up.
They ignore you, or turn you down
Often this is the worry rather than the wish taking its turn. If it keeps happening, it may be worth looking at the fear of rejection behind it, because that fear tends to shape what you do awake as well.
You kiss them
A kiss in a dream is usually about closeness and the wish for it. It is not a forecast, and it is nothing to feel embarrassed about over breakfast.
They are with someone else
Dreams like this tend to follow uncertainty: not knowing where you stand, or knowing that they are taken and minding more than you let on.
Someone you never thought of that way
Some crushes begin in a dream. You wake up seeing a friend or colleague differently, and the feeling lingers into the day. Sometimes that is just the dream’s mood wearing off; sometimes you had noticed more about them than you had admitted to yourself.
A crush from years ago
An old crush often stands for something: a time in your life, a version of yourself, or a door you never quite closed. If it feels like unfinished business, the one that got away is worth reading.
Can a dream change how you feel about someone?
It can colour the day after. In a study of students in relationships who kept dream diaries for two weeks, dreams in which a partner was unfaithful, or that were full of jealousy, were followed by more conflict and less closeness with the real partner the next day. The dream had not changed anything about the partner. It had changed the mood the dreamer brought to them.
The same can happen with a crush. If you wake up hurt by something they said in a dream, remember that they did not say it. If you wake up giddy, enjoy it, and let what they actually do decide what happens next.
Dreaming about your crush when you are in a relationship
This is very common, and it is not cheating. Dreams are not choices, and your mind does not check your relationship status before casting a dream. You do not owe your partner a report on every dream, and you do not need to hide one either.
If the dream is pointing at a real crush, one you also feel awake, that is worth some honest thought, and having a crush while in a relationship walks through it. There is no shame in the feeling. What would actually be wrong is cheating, or lying to cover it, and a dream is neither of those.
What to do with the feeling
- Write it down when you wake, starting with how it felt rather than what happened. The feeling fades fastest, and it is the useful part.
- Ask what the dream made you want: to see them, to be noticed by them, or simply to stop wondering where you stand.
- If you are both single and you get on, telling them “you were in my dream last night” is a classic flirt for a reason. Keep the details light.
- If you would like them to know how you feel, say it awake. If your nerves get in the way, being nervous around your crush has ways to settle them.
Where IF fits: saying it awake
The dream fades by lunchtime; the feeling often does not. IF exists for feelings like this: taken or not, and whoever turned up in your sleep, you can tell a real person from your waking life how you feel, honestly, and keep it there until the time comes to act.
Awake, it works like this. If you are both single and they have a profile already, a Like is enough; once they accept, you are talking. If a partner is part of the picture on either side, or they are not on IF at all, you write an IF: 250 characters at most, sealed from the moment it goes. You might come across them on Swipe, or reach them through Search using an email, number or Instagram handle that came from them. Address it to an email and IF sends one invitation; address it to a number or a handle and not a word goes out, though the IF stays ready in case they sign up.
You could even keep the dream in it: “Weird thing to admit, but you were in my dream last night, and I woke up realising I’ve liked you for ages. No pressure. Just wanted it said.”
If you are in a relationship, the same honesty holds. A dream is not cheating, and neither is an IF: nothing opens until you are both single, which makes it the opposite of flirting on the side. Like a dream, it is also yours to keep private; you owe nobody an account of it, a partner included.
A notice may tell them something is waiting, and that is all it tells them: not your name, not a word of what you wrote. Your first IF costs nothing. A dream plays to an audience of one, and that one is you; an IF lets the person who starred in it find out.
Questions people ask
Is it normal to dream about your crush every night?
Yes, especially early on, when a crush takes up a lot of your waking thoughts. As the feeling settles, or the uncertainty resolves either way, the dreams usually become less frequent.
Why do I dream about my crush even when I try not to?
Because trying not to think about someone can make them more likely to appear. Pushing a thought away keeps it close to the surface, and in sleep it slips through.
Should you tell your crush you dreamed about them?
If you are on friendly terms and the dream was sweet or funny, it can be a light, flirty opener. Skip anything too intimate, and read their reaction before saying more.
What does it mean to dream about someone you do not fancy?
Usually that they have been on your mind for some other reason: something they said, something they represent, or simply that you saw them a lot that week. Not every romantic dream reveals a romantic feeling.
Your dreams already know how you feel. If you want the person to know too, and the timing is not on your side, tell them in an IF, sealed until a better morning.