Real life once, along time ago, provided a perfect mate, then it took her away in a fashion far more more cruel than infidelity. We shared life together in happiness just long enough to learn that such states really can exist. That alone, regardless of how it ends, warrants deep gratitude rather than bitterness.

Far too many people instinctively crave such a state and go through long lives never finding it.

It wasn't to be the only heartbreaking crisis. The next, though short of the same kind of magic, soared higher and life intervened again. An instinctive grasping at straws to survive daily paiin and make sense out of life led to some discoveries. One helped mental salvation and curiously, though centuries old, a connection it made between life and dreams, time and death put expectations into better perspective. At used bookstore downtown in Stanford California I found a collection of Shakespeare's complete works. One small portion that relates to what you describe puts things in beautiful proportion. From Tempest:

"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."

Dream or waking reality, there is too little time and too few of opportunities to savor what this great globe bestows to allow fear of loss. Loss of all is guaranteed and fear dilutes and distracts from those fleeting moments filled with delight. Another of Will's perspectives on time:

My personal favorite, Sonnet XII

"When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence."

Perfect is a verb. The noun is imaginary.

I don't think that person exists, either in any dream I've ever had, or in reality.

When I dream about someone or something like that, it's usually about something I'm disconnected with in myself that I don't want to face and that I'll only feel complete when I find it "out there." Because whether or not that person shows up, I still have to deal with my crap.

About 30 years ago, I read an article in The Smithsonian. It was about reseach as to whether we can control our dreams. As I recall, the research had not been completed, but one scientist said that it appeared we could control our dreams. How? Simply by knowing that we can. I absorbed that info. It worked (to a certain extent). I have dreams in which my former b/f or huband are cheating on me. They are horrible dreams. Since reading that article, I have been able (not 100% of the time) to change the direction of the dream and....exact revenge.

I know there is something called "lucid dreaming," but I have not reseached it. Well, no time like the present.

Take 2 sleeping pills with a stiff shot of whiskey and call my shrink in the morning.

I had that dream more than a couple of times in my life, never saw her face or her even, but she was there. (in the dream).
It came true briefly once, this girl fitted the dream in every way. Her family loved me, we are still in contact my family loved her and ask about her still, my kids loved her, she and my son still chat online.
And she cheated on me, so that doomed it all.

I( have going on 59 years of marriage!

One of my recurring dreams, without detail, is of my mother laughing while I am being tortured. Not a happy dream.

I know that we all dream every night, but there are very few times that I know that I’ve dreamt. I had a few recurring nightmares that I still remember.

I've never dreamt of my perfect mate. um