Freudian

I have had this dream several times in the past few weeks.

The dream had different versions, and most of them didn't really have a plot. But it was the mood that was very similar, and so I count them as essentially the same dream.

In my dream, I was always a law school student, feeling a lot of stress and not doing very well. In one of the versions, I knew I had to go to class but didn't know where to go. In another version, I had to take an exam that day and didn't feel prepared at all. In another version, I didn't do any of my readings or brief any of my cases. In nearly all versions, I was walking around in the campus and trying to figure out what to do while being very very stressed.

While all this was happening, there would be a man who sometimes accompanied me as I frantically ran around, and sometimes would meet me halfway through my dream.

In my dream, I understood that this man was my boyfriend. Not Boyfriend in real life, but my boyfriend in my dream. The man was not always the same person. In most of the versions, he was a stranger that I had never met before -- tall, slim, good looking, Caucasian, etc. In one of the version, he was actually a good friend of mine in real life.

Anyway, the dream was always anxiety-ridden with respect to this man. Most of my anxiety came from feeling that something was vaguely wrong about this relationship, that I didn't love this person nor did I feel secure with him. In my dream, I always felt a profound sense of emptiness, and I would frantically try to remember why. WHY was I not happy with this person? WHY didn't I feel like I belonged with him? WHY didn't I feel secure when he's around?

In my dream, I would struggle to think this through. I would try to trace how I came to be with this person, and try to think through my past relationships like E and H and J, feeling certain, as I went through each one, that I didn't feel any more secure with them than with this current person in my dream.

What's weird is that in my dream, even though I could recall all my exes perfectly, I could never remember Boyfriend. So as much as I struggled, it just never felt right.

There would be a strong sense of despair as I realized that this man was the person I would end up with, because I was already 26 and couldn't afford to break up yet again and start anew with someone... (Yes, this was literally my thought in my dream) Then I would feel very sad, like I had nothing to look forward to in my life anymore, that this was the person I would be stuck with, someone I didn't really care about and couldn't count on. That I knew this was not quite right but couldn't figure out (or remember) who I was supposed to be with.

At this point, I usually woke up, in cold sweat, and remembered with huge relief that in real life I'm with Boyfriend, and then everything felt right again.

So, what does this mean?

Clearly, this is an anxiety dream. Partly about law school, and partly about my relationship with Boyfriend.

But beyond that, what exactly does it say about my relationship with him? Why can't I never remember him in my dream? What do I feel anxious about? Who are all these other people? And what about this good friend? In real life, I am quite fond of him, but in my dream, I felt terror and despair at the prospect of spending the rest of my life with him.