Why aren't sex dreams so simple anymore?

Do you ever have sex dreams? Dreams of wildly kissing someone you know, or some made up person you've never met, before ripping off clothes and throwing each other around in the height of passion?

I used to have sex dreams. These days I'm having 'romance dreams' instead.

I've just woken up and in the back of my mind there is a man with soft, dark hair and blue eyes called Andy. Or it could have been Gary. Or maybe Tim. No I'm pretty sure he was Andy. Unfortunately Andy is drifting off like a passing stranger's cigarette smoke - lingering and twisting into the air, but slowly vanishing and leaving you alone.

I think that in the dream, Andy and I met at a party or in a bar. It was an early summer's evening and while by the window, Andy and I were drawn together and flirted gently. I felt engulfed by him. His blue eyes, dark hair and kissable lips. He was taller than me, I remember that. And then for some reason we arranged to meet up later as we were torn apart by friends who wanted us both to meet other people. Then, in the dream and for no apparent reason, I started drawing a picture of him.

In the picture he was dressed as a war time post man wearing a dark blue jacket and a postman's hat, facing away from me but with his head turned so I could see his profile. Somehow, my fingers were flowing across the page with a pencil and all the colours were appearing in the right place. I was standing on some metal fire escape styled stairs while I did it and I knew I was late to meet him. Even though we hadn't arranged it, I felt sure that Andy was in the bar upstairs but I had to finish this picture of him. My friends commented over my shoulder what a great picture it was but other people's voices were telling me I was late. I knew I'd be a fool to miss seeing Andy again and so I started up the stairs towards the room above me.

However, as I got halfway up the stairs I heard Andy's voice behind me saying 'stop the clock' (too much Treasure Hunt as a child I fear) and I turned around to see that he'd been just one step down from where I'd been standing all along and I'd never known he was there. There was a smile and I think a feeling of joy in just seeing him again but that was where the dream ended and now I'm remembering less and less of him and the magic that we shared.

For some reason I feel as though I've lost something - a chance of another kiss from such a handsome man who could make my heart melt with just a smile.

I get this kind of dream all the time now. I'm no longer being thrown onto beds by men I've seen at some point in my day or having fictional handsome blond men with great bodies and perfect tans pushing me against my mother's bathroom wall. Those were the dream men of my 20s and now this is the 30-something replacement dream.

I think Andy was a mix of an actor called Tom Ellis who I'd seen in Doctor Who, another actor called Matthew Needham from Casualty and a man called Tim (or Lovely Tim as I called him in response to being called Handsome Matt) who I spoke to on Sunday night outside Via Fossa after an evening of furtive glances and gentle flirting from afar, despite him then having a row with his boyfriend over the whole thing as a result.

There's even now a part of me which resents Andy for having appeared in my dream and then leaving me like this. There'll be another Andy in another dream soon enough I'm sure and although he might disappear into thin air once I wake up, at least he'll never leave me for someone else, break my heart or think we're better off being 'just friends'.