Matthew McConaughey’s journey to love began not in Hollywood, but in his dreams. Literally.
PublishedNovember 23, 2025 11:45 AM EST•UpdatedNovember 23, 2025 11:30 AM EST
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I never want to hear that actors are out of touch with how everyone else lives their lives ever again. Or at least not when it comes to Matthew McConaughey.
He may be a famous actor, but he’s just like everyone else. He puts his pants on one leg at a time, I assume, anyway, and he found his wife of 13 years, Camila Alves, thanks to the power of a wet dream.
Who hasn’t been there? McConaughey, now 56, could have ignored the message of this special dream he had in his mid-30s, but he didn’t do that. He allowed this magical moment to open up his heart.
Camila Alves McConaughey and Matthew McConaughey attend the “Life Is A Dream” concert in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Photo by Cedric Ribeiro/Getty Images for GEA)
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In doing so, it ended up leading him to his wife. He shared the story of this wet dream in his Lyrics of Living newsletter on Friday. His dream started as most of these kinds of dreams do.
McConaughey explained that he was celebrating his 88th birthday on the front porch of his country home, reports US Weekly. He was surrounded by his 88 children and 22 baby mommas. Again, we’ve all been there.
The difference with this dream was he didn’t ignore it like the rest of us. He had the courage to run with the hidden message it was delivering.
“I had met, spent time with, and seriously dated some wonderful women in my life, many of whom I am still friends with today, but ultimately they were all stops, no stays,” McConaughey wrote.
“In my mid-30s, I was looking for a lifetime lover, a best friend, and a mother-to-be. I was looking for more, I was looking for the one, I was looking for her. Then I had a wet dream.”
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In the dream, he had never married any of the 22 women with whom he had 88 children. He explained, “Each mother and I shared an idyllic memory, the children roosted upon my lap. We hugged, we kissed, we laughed and joked, we cried tears of happiness.”
He continued, “They all gathered around me on the porch for a family photograph, and we looked toward a large-format box camera on a tripod at the top of the driveway. Three! Two! One! Then I came.”
Camila Alves McConaughey and Matthew McConaughey in the AELTC’s Parkside Suite in No.1 Court at The Championships 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Jordan Peck/Getty Images for AELTC)
That could have simply been one of many dreams had he let it. But it wasn’t. Matthew McConaughey said the dream reminded him that he wanted to become a father. It was also a sign.
“The red light vision of being a lifelong bachelor had come to me in a greenlight wet dream. It was a spiritual sign, a message to surrender, to quit trying so intentionally to find the perfect woman for me, and, rather, concede to the natural selection process of finding her, her finding me, or not. So I quit looking for her.”
You know what happened when he stopped looking? He found “The One.” Let those chills travel over your skin for a minute and get ready for a second round. He said that he met Camila Alves three months after his wet dream.
The rest is history. McConaughey said, “Twenty years later she’s still the only woman I’ve ever wanted to take on a date, sleep with, or wake up next to.”
That is a beautiful story. He didn’t get there by being an out-of-touch, selfish actor. He got there by being one of us. Don’t ever forget that.
