I keep having dreams about an old friend from high school. He and I were never romantically involved with each other, but we did go to prom together as friends, and we were developing a much closer friendship (at least, I thought we were) towards the end of high school. However, two things intervened to mess things up. The first was that I was going to college after high school and he wasn’t (however, I wasn’t going to college very far away from our home town). The second thing was that he was having a lot of problems at home, and his father threw him out of the house the night we graduated from high school.

Several days after that he came by my house and gave me a phone number of the relative he was staying with. However, when I tried to call this number, it turned out to be a wrong number. I didn’t think he’d done it on purpose, and I figured that he’d call me in a few days since he knew my phone number (which is still my parents’ phone number, incidentally). However, that never happened, and I have never heard from him since. In the five years since, I have gone on with my life, gone to college, and gotten married (I got married two years ago). However, I continue to this day to have dreams about my old friend.

Lately, these dreams have been happening with much more frequency. Usually, I meet up with him somewhere (at a party, on the street, at our old school, and other places) and it’s like I completely forget I am dreaming...I ask him where he has been, what he’s been doing, etc. He weasels out of answering my questions by getting himself lost back in the crowd or by asking me some inane question or sometimes by me waking up. I am guessing that he doesn’t answer my questions because he is a product of my brain and since I don’t know the answers to my questions, he can’t either.

However, every time I wake up from one of these dreams, I have a renewed curiousity about what happened to him, and I’ve considered trying to find him and meet up with him again. I even looked for his name on the Internet, but I didn’t have much success. I have this nagging doubt that perhaps he really did try to get rid of me on purpose by giving me a phony phone number (in which case, why would I want to meet up again with someone who’d do something like that?)

Well, last night, I had yet another dream about him. However, the details of this dream were slightly different. He was asking me the questions, and then he was angry with me because I hadn’t contacted him. I shouted back that I had his phone number, I called it and it was a wrong number, so I waited for him to call my parents’ number and he never did. He made no effort to contact me. Eventually, after I didn’t know where he was and none of our friends knew where he was, I decided that it was time to move on. “And guess what?” I said, as I pointed to my wedding ring. “I am now married - to somebody else!’ I woke up soon afterwards. Well, now I am wondering if my brain is finally deciding to move on. Perhaps I don’t need him to answer my questions after all. (But...I still wonder what happened). I don’t think I should be so obsessed with someone whom I have not even seen for five years...maybe this latest dream spells an end to that. What do you think? Thanks for any thoughts on this.

- Jill, Age 23, USA

Hi Jill -

I agree with you that your friend’s disappearance is peculiar. While it is common to lose track of friends for a month or two - or even an entire year between high school and college - five years is a long time by anybody’s standards. What is more peculiar, and what contributes to your “obsession” - I think - is the fact that the disappearance occurred just as you two were beginning to move closer together in your friendship. It is clear that you, at least, felt your relationship had the potential to turn romantic. Naturally this makes you curious about the disappearing act. Did he run away? Did he deliberately deceive you? In your last dream especially, you sound a bit like a bride who was left waiting at the alter. What’s worse, the mystery still isn’t solved.

The fact that your dreams recur show that this relationship still is on your mind - though I don’t mean to imply that you think of your old friend romantically. (Married woman that you are - you clearly moved on to “other pastures” years ago). Rather, I genuinely believe it is the mystery of the disappearance that still causes your mind to wonder. The fact is that you have not had an ounce of closure on this relationship. You haven’t heard about his whereabouts though the grapevine; you haven’t heard that he is married and living in Detroit, say; you haven’t bumped into him at the mall or supermarket or in a bar. And apparently none of his or your friends know where he is either.

If I were you, even though my feelings were hurt by his disappearance, I would hesitate to try to “over-think” this situation. The truth of the matter is that you really don’t know what happened to your friend, and so therefore, you may as well give him the benefit of the doubt. He may have given you the wrong number by accident (it was a new number for him to remember) and then assumed you didn’t want to persue the relationship because “you never called him.” This scenario certainly is implied in your most recent dream. Also, considering the difficult circumstances at the time (him being thrown out of his parent’s house) I would also be concerned about what may have happened next in his life. Did he hit the road and start wandering? Did he move back in with his parents and get a job? Is he an artist in Italy now? You just don’t know.

It’s been a long time - long enough to let bygones be bygones. I wish to repeat that I don’t think, judging from the content of your dreams, that you are romantically interested in this man. According to what you say, in most of them you still are fighting over his disappearance - which is not exactly kissing passionately on a beach, for example. In light of this - seeing that it is the curiosity and not the passion that is driving you - why don’t you settle this question once and for all? Get on the phone and see if you can’t find out where your old friend went to. (A good place to start would be to call his parents). I think it’s worth giving him the benefit of the doubt one more time - even if it’s only to satisfy your own curiosity. If it turns out that two old friends get re-united - then so much the better.