What it usually means
Dreams about lovers are among the most vivid and the most confusing that people have. They can feel more real than waking life, and they often involve people the dreamer has no intention of being with. The first thing to know is that a dream lover is rarely a forecast of a real relationship.
More often the lover stands for a quality you are drawn to. The confidence of a colleague, the calm of a friend, the freedom of a stranger: in a dream, attraction is a way of saying "I want more of this in my life", and the person simply carries that quality.
Many lover dreams are about intimacy itself. They come when a person longs for closeness, feels distant from a partner, or is learning to let someone in. The dream lover may be a picture of the connection the dreamer wants rather than of anyone in particular.
Dreams of a secret lover or an affair are common in committed relationships, and they upset people. They rarely mean a wish to cheat. More often they point to something missing in the relationship — attention, excitement, tenderness — or to a part of the dreamer that wants space of its own.
The feeling on waking is the most useful guide. Warmth, guilt, longing, relief: the emotion usually shows what the dream was about more clearly than the identity of the lover.
What changes the meaning
An unknown lover. A quality or experience you long for; often a part of yourself.
A former lover. Unfinished feelings, or a quality of that time you miss.
A secret lover. A need you are not admitting openly; sometimes a part of life you keep private.
Your partner as a lover. Closeness, renewal, or a wish for more passion in the relationship.
A lover leaving. Fear of losing closeness; the end of an attraction or a stage.
A lover who is a friend. Admiration or closeness, not necessarily romantic interest.
A lover who is a celebrity. Wanting recognition, glamour or the qualities that person represents.
A lover who is someone forbidden. A desire or quality that does not fit your current rules.
A lover without a face. Longing for intimacy in general rather than for a person.
Being rejected by a lover. Fear of not being wanted; old hurts returning.
A wedding with a lover. A wish to commit to something — not always a person.
Several lovers. Competing desires; uncertainty about what you want.
When it keeps coming back
Recurring lover dreams often appear in periods of loneliness or emotional distance, when the need for closeness is strong.
They also come when a relationship is changing — after a birth, during long separations, in the years when partners become more like colleagues than lovers.
If the same dream lover keeps returning, describe them in a few words on waking. Over time the description often turns out to describe what you want to become, not whom you want to be with.
In Jungian terms
Jung once wrote that the meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed. He was writing about doctor and patient, but the image has been taken up far beyond the consulting room, because it fits love so exactly.
Jungian readers see dream lovers in that light. The figure is a picture of a meeting that changes both sides — sometimes with another person, often with a part of yourself that has been waiting to be joined. Desire in such dreams is the force that brings the two substances together.
So a lover dream can be read less as a story about romance than as a report on a reaction under way. What in you is being changed by what you are drawn to?