I am in a room with a guy friend (who is really my boyfriend of 3 years' best friend.....I'll call him Tim, and he and I are, in real life, really kinda mean to each other, lots of insults, you know) and he's sitting next to my niece, who is 7 months old, on a couch, his arm across the back of the couch behind her, and he's talking to her while she chews on some plastic toy (you know how babies are). I sit on the other side of my niece and start playing with her, and I can see Tim watching me with a smile on his face, and I while leaning into my niece to kiss her forehead or something, I rest my head in Tim's hand, and he leans down and kisses me, on the mouth, very sweetly, a little tongue and everything! and that was the end of that one. I suppose I should add that he and I did go out a couple times before I started dating my current boyfriend, also my boyfriend and I are very committed. I don't get it.

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 21/ Indiana

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} Female

How Did You Find the Dream Forum? no

Hi Amanda,

To be up front with you, a lot of what follows below is a “cut and paste” job from a recent post to Erryn that I made on this site, but the ideas relate directly to your dream as well, so I’ll start with them first and then add some comments that may be more specific to your situation. It all may seem a little dry at first, but stick with it and I think that you may find some useful ideas.

Generally, the image of a male in a woman’s dream often represents her inner masculine side that is also a psychological “complex” formed from early experiences of interactions with her father and other significant male figures. This doesn’t sound too romantic of course, but on the whole it’s better to have some idea of these very real inner parts of yourself that can affect decisions about the most important relationships in your life.

Frequently this inner man symbolizes issues related to the intellect, thinking, holding opinions in general, and such qualities as assertiveness, courage, deciding what you want and going after it etc. An equivalent feminine figure exists in the psychology of men.

So to sum up, the image of Tim in your dream probably isn’t dealing with a potential outer relationship issue with him but is more about your inner so-called “masculine” side.

Since you were at least a little interested in Tim in the past, this tends to mean that he has some qualities or traits of your inner image of a man, and these were unconsciously projected onto him. Since you argue a lot, there may be some annoying traits of his that you share in some way and don’t tend to like admitting about yourself. All the same, these tended to attract you and this could cause problems if you’re not really conscious enough about what the core reason for the attraction was.

If you like, you can read more about the inner male figure on this site under “Animus”.

An idea that might be hard to grasp at first is that this image of your inner man often represents the degree of commitment to yourself, to your own self development as an individual.

If for example a dream shows a criminal-type etc. as a boyfriend or husband, a woman may not be loyal enough to her own developing inner self. In contrast, this dream seems to show that something you did just before the dream may have put you into a positive closer contact with this inner part of yourself (the kiss). So you’d have to think back to recent events to see if anything spontaneously comes to mind that might be related in some way to your being more assertive or going for what you want etc. as opposed to perhaps trying to please others too much.

Whatever it was may have brought you closer to some undeveloped and what you may see as annoying parts of yourself which can now be further worked at to make them an ongoing element of your everyday conscious mind in the form of useful abilities and ways of acting etc.

Also, you could focus on the image of your niece in the dream in order to see what spontaneously comes to mind because she could symbolize some new attitude or behavior that should be encouraged to grow. It may seem unlikely, but you could even try thinking back to around seven months ago (the age of your niece) to see if there was any important change in your outlook that occurred around then.

Your niece could also symbolize the overall potential of who you can become as a woman by integrating all the various parts of your personality into a cohesive whole.

It’s always best to have some background information about the dreamer and recent events that have occurred before attempting to analyze a dream, so the thoughts above may be off the mark in your overall situation. But if you’d like to explore further this idea of an “inner man”, you might like “Conscious Femininity” as a brief and easy-to-read introduction to Marion Woodman’s writings on the subject.

Please Note: After a dream has been interpreted, a follow-up response to the interpretation is requested. This will help both the dreamer and the interpreter better understand the dream message. All interpretations are FREE and the only compensation we ask is your participation in the process of understanding your dream

Age & Gender & Location {Required}: 57, Canada

Have You Posted Before? Date of Last Post {Use Search and Your Post Name to Help Find Last Post} M