Is it possible to feel Deep love and dispair in a dream?

[MissRoziel]

I had a dream that I grew up with a boy and we where very close friend our whole lives, I'd fallen in love with him but he didn't feel the same. but, I felt it, the love for this person was so strong and it physically hurt because I knew he'd never love me back. as the dream went on we got older and he became a daredevil and a hero making a lot of enemies.

one of these enemies saw how much I loved him and thought he loved me back so The enemy took me hostage but when he tried to bargain for my life I couldn't let this evil man kill the man I loved, and I knew the evil man could so I accepted that he would never love me and killed myself so he wouldn't come to save me and die himself.

It was so weird through the whole dream I felt the love building and building, I felt this deep pain and loneliness as I realized he couldn't love me, it wasn't that he didn't want to but he actually couldn't do it. I made the decision to kill myself to save him, but in making that decision I realized it wouldn't hurt him as badly if I died because he didn't love me

I wasn't, 'me' in the dream the person I was in the dream was someone else I felt physically different and my personality was different to. it was over all very very strange. I often have very vivid dreams but this one, the feeling of love and despair was so strong it was killing me inside. Has anyone else ever had this?

[Shewolf]

I've had several dreams in which I was not "me" and died in both of them; once by rapier and the other time during childbirth.
I also experienced very "heavy" emotions regarding other people and in the situations, to which I later realized that they we're only that; experiences and life lessons.

Usually when I dreamt it and it stayed with me, I took it as a sign that it was the appropriate moment for me to view this lesson and incorporate it into the present-day.
Perhaps it was because, in the months (or years) that came, I would be confronted with an experience that needed me to have the knowledge of that particular life-lesson.
I couldn’t have seen the experiences (or what I needed that particular lesson for) coming. For some it took years, and in an instant I was reminded of that dream again.
It’s perhaps most like a seed that is planted at the right time and germinates when the moment comes.

Anyhow, that's how I view it.
Hope it helps a bit, I understand how confuzzled you must have woken up.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I think you can "feel" and "experience" anything in a dream.  Your mind is working at a resolution to something for you and in this case may be using your own experiences, fantasies or imaginings to write the script.  Our emotions and feelings have a lot to do with chemical reactions in our brains and this all seems perfectly normal to me.

[Mathim]

I think you can "feel" and "experience" anything in a dream.  Your mind is working at a resolution to something for you and in this case may be using your own experiences, fantasies or imaginings to write the script.  Our emotions and feelings have a lot to do with chemical reactions in our brains and this all seems perfectly normal to me.

I agree. It's quite phenomenal but I've felt the entire gamut of emotional stuff. I swear, once I even felt the intense heat of the sun on the back of my neck in a dream while walking through my childhood schoolyard even though physical sensations are supposedly not felt in dreams.

I felt both deep love and deep despair in a dream simultaneously, actually. I dreamt I was going to have to sacrifice myself to save the lives of several classmates and confessed my love to one (who in real life was unattainable but regardless, I was about to die and couldn't let those feelings go unspoken). So yeah, it's not just intense fear you can feel in a dream.

[Oniya]

When it comes down to it, everything we feel is a result of brain activity.  If the brain is disconnected (for example, from a spinal cord injury), we don't feel things directly anymore.  Anything that can exist in your brain can exist in a dream (even if that thing can't exist in real life.)  Therefore, any sensation or emotion should be able to exist in a dream.  (Emotions are even a bit easier to accept as existing, since the peripheral nerves wouldn't be sending counter-signals of 'What do you mean?  It's 5 below here!  Heat doesn't compute!')

[gaggedLouise]

The idea of dying for someone you know will never love you back is interesting, and a bit twisted. In the opera Rigoletto it gets a cruel thrust. Gilda, the teenage daughter of the court jester Rigoletto, is picked up by the raunchy and fun-loving Duke of Mantua (who has humiliated her father). At first the Duke poses as a young nobleman on the run, but as soon as he's got Gilda hooked it´doesn't take that long for her to realize who he is. After a while somebody shows her that he is just treating her as a doll whom he can throw away at any moment, it's plain to her that he has no serious feelings for her. But when she happens to come upon a plot to have the Duke assassinated, for political and personal reasons, at a mountain inn which he's using as his love nest, she decides to forestall it and die for him even though she knows her love is unrequited. Srtanding outside the door of the inn on a stormy night, she hears the innkeeper and his sister discussing how to kill the duke, the guy is planning to go ahead but his sister (who is in love with the prince) finally talks him into doing it another way: if someone enters their inn on this windy night, that person shall be killed and delivered to the other conspirators, one of which happens to be Rigoletto, Gilda's father.

The girl hears all of it - this is romantic opera, you know! - and makes the dodgy decision to have herself killed for her love interest. She knocks on the door and gets in, the sister (her rival!!)  grabs her and pulls a cloth over her head and the innkepper stabs her without hesitation. They wrap the dying young woman in a mat, with ropes trussed around it, and deliver her to - her father, telling him it's the duke's dead body for him to sink into the lake with chains and weights attached...I think you can figure out how it ends.

That final part really has something very scandalous about it. I remember hearing about the storyline when I was fifteen and thinking "this is, um, different!" and seeing it staged last year in a very racy production by the Met - they had moved the whole story to Las Vegas around 1960, with "Duke" as a famous entertainer with friends and groupies - I could tell it still has the power to shock and disturb you.

[Tyrhung]

This is an extremely interesting thread, from the dreams to the opera.  :)

I have no doubt that one can actually feel powerful emotions in their dreams, because I myself recall having felt them.  There was one dream I had where I was in my house, and a woman came knocking on the door frantically with the palm of her hand, like she was trying not to alert someone outside.  I opened the door and suddenly recognized it was a woman I had known (in my dream) for ages, and she was in some kind of trouble.  The details are lost to time, I'm afraid, but at one point she asked if I trusted her.  I told her that she was the only person that I trusted, and I genuinely meant it in the dream.  While perhaps this is not necessarily the very same kinds of feelings of love or despair that you have indicated (that sounds like an incredibly lucid dream) I did feel a very strong bond of friendship and unconditional love for this 'woman of my dreams.'  I think it is ironic that this dream, which occurred over five years ago, remains in my memory as more of a sensation than a narrative that I can recite, or pictures that I can envision.

[Crimzon Dragon]

I think you can "feel" and "experience" anything in a dream.  Your mind is working at a resolution to something for you and in this case may be using your own experiences, fantasies or imaginings to write the script.  Our emotions and feelings have a lot to do with chemical reactions in our brains and this all seems perfectly normal to me.

Agree 100 percent with this observation.  Many times, a dream will affect me for a few days afterward in my relationships to others until I can sort out what is dream and what is reality...sometimes, it is not good, others, maybe not so bad, but it definitely has an affect, especially when a loved one has done something to hurt in a dream.

[Mathim]

The idea of dying for someone you know will never love you back is interesting, and a bit twisted. In the opera Rigoletto it gets a cruel thrust. Gilda, the teenage daughter of the court jester Rigoletto, is picked up by the raunchy and fun-loving Duke of Mantua (who has humiliated her father). At first the Duke poses as a young nobleman on the run, but as soon as he's got Gilda hooked it´doesn't take that long for her to realize who he is. After a while somebody shows her that he is just treating her as a doll whom he can throw away at any moment, it's plain to her that he has no serious feelings for her. But when she happens to come upon a plot to have the Duke assassinated, for political and personal reasons, at a mountain inn which he's using as his love nest, she decides to forestall it and die for him even though she knows her love is unrequited. Srtanding outside the door of the inn on a stormy night, she hears the innkeeper and his sister discussing how to kill the duke, the guy is planning to go ahead but his sister (who is in love with the prince) finally talks him into doing it another way: if someone enters their inn on this windy night, that person shall be killed and delivered to the other conspirators, one of which happens to be Rigoletto, Gilda's father.

The girl hears all of it - this is romantic opera, you know! - and makes the dodgy decision to have herself killed for her love interest. She knocks on the door and gets in, the sister (her rival!!)  grabs her and pulls a cloth over her head and the innkepper stabs her without hesitation. They wrap the dying young woman in a mat, with ropes trussed around it, and deliver her to - her father, telling him it's the duke's dead body for him to sink into the lake with chains and weights attached...I think you can figure out how it ends.

That final part really has something very scandalous about it. I remember hearing about the storyline when I was fifteen and thinking "this is, um, different!" and seeing it staged last year in a very racy production by the Met - they had moved the whole story to Las Vegas around 1960, with "Duke" as a famous entertainer with friends and groupies - I could tell it still has the power to shock and disturb you.

The weird thing was, I didn't know her that well at all, and I just happened to think she was attractive but emotionally, there had never been anything between either of us, so it's odd to me thinking back that I would have felt that way for her in the dream. Even if it was subconscious, the depth of the feeling would not justifiably be that strong, I would think.

[Inkidu]

Personal experience here, nothing backed by science.

I don't feel physical pain in dreams. I get memories of what the pain should feel like intellectually. My brain also seems to extrapolate experiences I've never felt before and created a false memory of the pain (never been shot, but have been shot in dreams).

I do, however, feel all the emotional pains. My theory is that since emotional pain is something that starts in the brain and is felt in the extremities instead of physical pain that starts in the extremities and is (for the sake of simplification) then transmitted to the brain. Since the brain is responsible for (or the originator of) dreams and emotions that means there's no other sensor to trip, so to speak.

[gaggedLouise]

Personal experience here, nothing backed by science.

I don't feel physical pain in dreams. I get memories of what the pain should feel like intellectually. My brain also seems to extrapolate experiences I've never felt before and created a false memory of the pain (never been shot, but have been shot in dreams).

I do, however, feel all the emotional pains. My theory is that since emotional pain is something that starts in the brain and is felt in the extremities instead of physical pain that starts in the extremities and is (for the sake of simplification) then transmitted to the brain. Since the brain is responsible for (or the originator of) dreams and emotions that means there's no other sensor to trip, so to speak.

Interesting. Sometimes I've felt physically mesmerized, meaning, unable to move at anything like normal speed and suppleness, while I was dreaming, and this "I can't move" experience included both the "me" in the dream and my limbs in bed. I know clearly in a way that it is a dream, but I still seem to be unable to move my actual body, even if in the dream there's a car that might hit me or a cliff giving way under my feet. Everything slides into a kind of slow-motion daze but I still can't move (I haven't felt terror at those points, since I knew it was a dream, just vague unease). At those times, I've had to shake off the dream and make myself exit it to feel normally able to get up and have a glass of water or whatever. It's kinda strange.

[Mnemaxa]

I have dreams like this often - including being other people (or even creatures on occasion with one particularly bad nightmare involving me being an alien life form complete with alien senses).  My perspectives on occasion switch from first person to third person and back even as different people, and my emotions and reactions and the sensations I feel are very realistic. 

One thing that seems to be somewhat unusual is my recall of sensations and the ability to read in my dreams.  Normally, most people cannot read in dreams, because of which parts of the mind are active in dreaming.  Because my ability to read is entirely based on word recognition than it is linguistics, I recognize the picture of a word  and so in my dreams I can read.  The physical sensation part is due to my ability to perfectly remember physical experiences and sensations, much like someone with eidetic memory an remember what they read or see (something I totally lack).  I can recall to mind exact physical sensations and experiences (which has it's obvious good side, but also some really unpleasant downsides).  So my activities in a dream can FEEL very real if I've actually done or experienced something in the waking world. 

While you consider the good aspect of that, you should think about preparing food and how that could be translated into a nightmare.

[gaggedLouise]

I've actually seen/heard people singing with lyrics that I could make out - to a tune I knew, but completely different lyrics that just seemed to exist right there, flowing as out of a tap. I had no feeling that my mind was inventing them, none at all. And those lyrucs were in English, which isn't my mother tongue.  8-) (One such dream involved Jon Bon Jovi of all people, but dressed in a vaguely glam/androgynous fashion)  :P

[Tyrhung]

I've actually seen/heard people singing with lyrics that I could make out - to a tune I knew, but completely different lyrics that just seemed to exist right there, flowing as out of a tap. I had no feeling that my mind was inventing them, none at all. And those lyrucs were in English, which isn't my mother tongue.  8-) (One such dream involved Jon Bon Jovi of all people, but dressed in a vaguely glam/androgynous fashion)  :P

That's fascinating!  It reminds me of a song that I once heard in my dream, and when I woke up I was able to play it - somewhat haltingly - on the piano.  I cannot read sheet music, but I did dabble with the piano a little and play by ear.

I also once heard a particular Tchaikovsky song while I was asleep and someone was watching a performance on television nearby.  I integrated it into my dream, which was subsequently a very sad one... lol, it involved my having terrible grades in school and needing to do so much remedial work that I wouldn't be able to take vacation that summer!  This little person I was going to play with over summer break was heartbroken, and it made me feel awful in the dream.  Hilarious to think about it now, but at the time I was devastated!

[Lilmisfit]

I think you can "feel" and "experience" anything in a dream.  Your mind is working at a resolution to something for you and in this case may be using your own experiences, fantasies or imaginings to write the script.  Our emotions and feelings have a lot to do with chemical reactions in our brains and this all seems perfectly normal to me.

Very well said! I too have had dreams where I feel undeniable emotions. Most of the time I am myself in the dream, but every so often I am somebody else. When dreams feel real and we perceive them to be real, then we will feel real emotions that go with them.