I woke up and realized I dreamed of Steve again. The dream had a lot of water. I was in a swampy park. I think maybe I was initially with my youngest son in the dream and a group of his friends. We were having some sort of adventure, maybe there was wild life and a gator, but they were non threatening. Then my companion became Steve. I was showing him around, wanting, as in all my dreams of him, to love me.

So, who is Steve? He was a boy I had a huge crush on in high school. We dated (sort of/ very strange relationship) on and off for ten years. After I got married, we lost touch, but I continued to obsess about him in my thoughts and dreams.

When facebook came to be, we reconnected. Both of us now married to others. The exchange felt like closure and felt validating. Although he told me I was 'the nicest anyone has ever been to him' and he had 'thought of me often over the years', he didn't say (as I was hoping he would) that he loved me and I was the one who got away.

Just like how I much later realized that our 'dating' had been more of a booty call back then, I soon could see that our reconnection was him wanting to try to have text sex with me behind our spouse's backs. I am not at all about that, and felt relieved that I was not his wife that he would cheat on.

We ended communication and for all logical reasons I learned he was not the man for me. He has so many bad problems that make him someone anyone would want to steer clear from... serious drug addiction, arrests. I don't even know why I would have such an obsession for him in the first place!

So, I guess I have OCD and this poor, unsuspecting man has been the object of my thoughts and dreams for decades. I even separate it in my mind as 'the real Steve' and my fantasy Steve.

Well, it's harmless enough. I never made it known to him about how I have obsessed and am OK with the way I acted. And, I suppose, if I thought about this person my whole life, attributing qualities to him that don't really exist in the real man while understanding that the 'real Steve' is probably someone I wouldn't even like if I was with in reality, then so what?

I think I conjured up some ideal and that's what he symbolizes. My father died when I was 12, three years before I fell in love with Steve. And, I tried to lose my virginity to him at 16, but he rejected me. I then went on my first real date with a friend of his, a brother of a friend of mine, I guy I wasn't attracted to at all. A guy also named Steve, who was legally an adult, and date raped me. I think he slipped me a drug. I didn't tell anyone but my best friend. I never said anything about it, self esteem in the gutter.