I have had this dream more than once, most recently a month or so ago. Any thoughts?

I dream its dark and I am running from someone across sand, I get to a lighthouse on a beach and I start to go up the stairs, before I know how I got there I am at the top and I am struggling with a man. My arms are always blocking my upper body and he has a grip on them like he is trying to push me backwards. This part of the dream seems like it last for a long time and I feel like I fight him until I just cant anymore. My arms are blocking his face so I cannot see who he is. He is wearing a black suit with white ruffles coming out of the breast area of his jacket. I am wearing a long Victorian style blue dress, and my hair is up in a bun type thing. I can actually hear the water from what I guess is the ocean, and i can hear him in a muffled type voice as he is fighting with me. He eventually backs me up to a rail or fence like thing and pushes me off the edge. I fall and can feel falling, but I never hit the ground. I always wake up. * With other dreams I can sometimes go back in where I left off and dream more, but with this particular dream I can't do it. I really cant pinpoint something that is going on with my life that may be causing this dream, because I have had it so many times during different times in my life.

To understand any dream, it is important to consider what was going on or what was looming in your waking life just before you had it. With recurring dreams, it's meaningful to think back to when you first had the dream, because that's when that feeling and often message about that situation in your waking life was first and indelibly imprinted in your mind with that symbolism. Here's a link to the definition of recurring dreams on this website: dreamdoctor.com/do-it-yourself/2-do-it-y...rring-dreams?lang=en

Your dream reflects your feelings of being pursued and attacked by an man in your waking life, one whose face you have obscured in your dream. A faceless or obscured face/identity in a dream can mean either that you don't yet know who this person is in your waking life or it is a self-protective choice by you (dream are all self-created) to protect you from some unpleasant reality. The imagery of your Victorian dress and your choice to protect your upper body (your breasts?) suggest that there may be a sexual component to the waking life relationship or concern, one which you are trying to protect yourself from in your waking life. He then pushes you back (off balance), off the edge/precipice and you are in a perpetual state of falling. Falling in dreams is all about feelings of instability and lack of support emotionally... you don't know where or how you are going to land. Does that describe any recent or past romantic relationships you have had or concerns you have about getting into one? Not knowing the waking life background that generated the nightmare, it's hard to say with certainty what it means.

Feelings in dream are never disguised, so how you feel in the dream is how you feel about its subject in your waking life. You struggle with this man and then pushes you off the edge to a terrifying fate. Based on how recurring dreams work, it would seem that you had a disastrous romantic relationship... and perhaps that pattern has continued... where this is a struggle with a man, he "pushes you" until you "fall" for him and the result is a strong feeling of insecurity and not knowing how you and your relationship will land. The dream may also harken back to a very dark experience that you had with a man, perhaps even one that involved rape. If so, your dream may be symptomatic of PTSD. Bottom line, your dream reflects issues/concerns you are having with a man that not only make you feel powerless, but insecure about what will happen.

Here are some links to the key symbols in your dream on this website to help you :

beach: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=168
house: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...task=details&id=1035
light: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...task=details&id=1176
faceless: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=758
fighting: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=789
can't hit (variation of can't fight): dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=315
high up: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=999
cliff (variation of edge): dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=483
ocean: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...task=details&id=1312
falling: dreamdoctor.com/component/dreams/?contro...&task=details&id=760

Please let us know if and how any of this resonates with you. If you would share the waking life background of your nightmare, that would be extremely generous and helpful for us all.

Thank you.