A recent greentext post about an imaginary wife made me think of this.
Have you ever had a dream, where you fell in love with a dream character?
I've had at least a couple over the years that I can vaguely remember. The dreams were so vivid, and the feeling of love for this imaginary person was so strong, that I woke up feeling rather heartbroken and a sense of longing.
I met, fell in love, got married, bought a house, started a family and grew old together with a woman i met in my dreams. In one night, i lived a lifetime. It was so super realistic that I woke up devastated that it was a dream. It took me weeks to stop thinking about it constantly throughout the day, and even to this day I still think about it occasionally going on 15 years later.
It's a reference to an old Reddit post where somebody had the same situation I did where they met someone yand fell in love and had long and happy life until they started noticing a lamp in their living room that sidn't look right. Drove them crazy in this dream and eventually forced them to wake up. I'm on mobile and can't find original post ATM but that's the jist.
On the flip side, I once had a super vivid dream that my wife started ghosting me, and left me for someone else. Years passed and I was still alone, lost interest in all of my hobbies, had to get rid of our pets, and I caught up with her randomly and she looked like she was much happier and better off, and I was so upset in the dream that I considered suicide. Woke up and was relieved that it was just a dream, but frustrated with my brain for putting me through all of that.