My ex haunts me

So I have this weird new thing where I've started dreaming about the first girl I ever really loved. We broke up over 20 years ago. In my dreams I'm chasing after but she's either super mean or totally ignores me. I've never had dreams mess me up like these ones do. Its weird because 1:I broke up with her 20 years ago. 2: I don't even hardly ever think about her and 3: she was never mean.
Normally I can shrug dreams off no problem. These ones mess with my head for days. I hate that it bothers me. I wish I could understand why it bugs me

I googled an AI answer as I do for my own misunderstood dreams.

Biggest takeaway was unresolved issues or closure. Character traits that you long to feel again.

We often subconsciously revisit our past. Either a time when we experienced great trauma or a time when we felt most joyful.

Do you ever finish the dream or do you wake up feeling disturbed.

If possible maybe when you wake from such dreams, write down the parts that you recall. Over a period of time you might be able to collectively piece together what the dream is trying to reveal to you.

I wish you the best at determining the WHY.

Why would AI be right about this though? AI is well known to hallucinate itself.

My mother passed away six months ago. She kept every letter I ever wrote to her, and since I lived far from home for much of my life, there are a lot of letters. Reading through them, I realised how badly I misremember so many things that happened in my past. It's been quite an unnerving experience.

Maybe it's just that I wish I had a woman that loved me. And if I can't have one in real life maybe my mind would be kind enough to let me experience some semblance of that In my sleep. But my mind sees fit to make my dreams match reality.

So true that we all, or almost all of us wish we had someone who loved us. Barring that being our reality, we process it every night and our brains clean themselves of various detritus. When reviewing a dream that was 'about a person,' we interpret it, re-tell the stories and each time we do this, the whole scenario evolves. Next time we dream about them, it's iincorporatng the feelings and thoughts we had in the meantime. Layer upon layer.

I dream about people who used to be in my life all the time; the dreams show them but weirdly represented. Some have faces, some just a blur, some are a mish-mash of several people.

condolences for your loss @Licorice.

Had another dream last night. Not my Ex but still another woman who hated me interesting that it was less impactful because I didn't know her. Its so weird. I wonder if my wife acted like she loves me, would the women in my dreams start being nice?

This idea is not related to dreaming of ex's. But I've had some weird dreams. They didn't make sense. Once I remember a dream where I shot a dog, I woke up, I thought, what on earth?? I'd never hurt a dog. I do think a lot of dreams can just be very random, you may have had a stressful day or month, and it can come out in weird or hard to understand ways, the purpose of the thing you remember about the dream may not be directly related to things about your ex wife.