Fawas*, 29, has been dealing with a complicated relationship with wet dreams since he was a teenager.
Now an adult, he finds himself still struggling with vivid dreams that make him feel conflicted and embarrassed, especially when they involve his siblings.
As told to Adeyinka
I’d just completed JSS 3 the first time it happened. We were taking reproduction in biology class at the time, and terms like ejaculation, sex, and wet dreams were flying around. They were new concepts to me, and the idea of my penis passing out something other than urine sparked curiosity in me. Some of the boys in my class who were older wouldn’t stop talking about the excitement they felt after ejaculating and how they also had wet dreams.
I must have been 13 or 14 then, but I knew I hadn’t experienced any of that, or maybe it was just a part of my body I’d never explored. I come from a strictly Muslim background, and sex was a taboo topic in our household growing up. Everything I learned about it was from biology class and the exaggerated tales from my schoolmates.
My curiosity increased as the class continued over the weeks, and we got deeper into the topic. One day, I called over a male classmate who seemed the most versed on the subject and asked how I could experience this ejaculation—and that was the first time I learned about masturbation. He told me to stroke my penis repeatedly when it’s hard, and I’d know I’d orgasmed when I produced a whitish, pap-like liquid. He also suggested watching porn to make it enjoyable or thinking sexual thoughts in my head. I didn’t even own a phone and hadn’t had any sexual experiences to aid my imagination, so that wasn’t an option. The closest thing that came to mind was half-naked models I’d seen on posters or the occasional sex scenes in movies.
So, I took his advice and started masturbating, but it yielded no results. I didn’t release the whitish pap-like liquid, and I didn’t feel anything either. The only thing I felt was pain in my penis from tugging too hard on the skin. I tried it a couple more times and finally gave up when my penis started hurting from friction.
Fast forward to the long break before resuming senior secondary school, I had my first wet dream. I woke up feeling confused because of the sticky wetness in my pants and thought I’d wet the bed. When I checked, the bed wasn’t wet, except for a little patch formed where the liquid had seeped through my boxers. I went to the bathroom, pulled off my boxers, and sniffed them. There was a weird smell I couldn’t understand, but I knew I’d finally experienced a wet dream. The situation only confused me more because I tried hard to remember my dreams from the night before, but I couldn’t.
The next day, I went to bed, willing myself to have another wet dream, but nothing happened when I woke up.
At the time, my siblings were home—two boys and a girl. They’re all older, and I guess because of that, they were comfortable stripping naked around me. It wasn’t a big deal; even our parents did the same. I always found the sight disturbing and would look away whenever they stepped out of the bathroom or pulled off their clothes to change. Yes, I’d let my eyes linger on some occasions out of curiosity, but I never thought anything sexual about it.
So, it was jarring the next time I had a wet dream and found myself getting intimate with my elder sister in the dream. I didn’t think much of it then, but it happened again. This time, it wasn’t just my sister—my brothers were there, too, and we all touched each other. The experience made me extremely uncomfortable, and I tried to avoid them whenever they showed up naked.
These wet dream episodes involving my siblings continued throughout my time in secondary school and even into university. The dreams were sometimes so vivid that we’d do things that felt disturbingly real to each other. It also puzzled me that my brothers appeared in the dreams, especially since I’ve never had romantic or sexual feelings for people of the same sex. At one point, I thought about talking to our eldest sibling about it but couldn’t find the right words. I only mentioned that I was having wet dreams, and he told me it was natural and would stop eventually. He doesn’t believe in anything spiritual, so he dismissed my deeper concerns.
As an adult, the wet dreams have significantly reduced, especially since I’m now sexually active and intimate with my partners as often as I can be. But the dreams involving my siblings still happen occasionally, and sometimes, I don’t even ejaculate. I wake up feeling a deep sense of secondhand embarrassment because of how real the dreams feel.
Sometimes, I want to blame it on those few moments I saw them naked around the house, but it’s been years since we all moved out, and we aren’t in each other’s personal space anymore. Yet, the dreams still happen.
I’ve continued to pray about it, and the prayers help. Sometimes, I go for months without dreams, only for them to return quickly and out of nowhere. Maybe one day, I’ll have the courage to talk to my siblings about it, but the thought of how that conversation would go makes me dread the idea, at least for now.
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