Get out of my head already!

A few weeks ago, I had a strange dream.

(Isn't it funny how no one ever says "I had a perfectly normal dream?" Or just merely, "I had a dream." No, it's always strange, weird, funny, unsettling, or, perhaps if you're lucky, good.)

In this dream I got an email from an old flame, my first, who treated me badly and ended things without really ending them at all - he just stopped talking to me. It's a wound that has healed but left a permanent scar, and it doesn't help that he has a pretty common name. I have called him asshole, but I later realized that was an insult to assholes... seriously, what did an asshole ever do to deserve such a thing as being a detrimental name for a bad person?  We'll call him jerkwad, because that's my mom's favorite name for him.

So I got an email from jerkwad, and it was explaining why he ended things the way he did.

"I tried to take your submission slowly, but it just wasn't working." There was more, but it being a dream means I don't remember the rambling bulk of it, and just this one phrase sticks out in my memory.

To this my dream-self thought "WTF? I never offered my submission to this jerkwad. He can't take it from me. Of course it wasn't working."

Why would I dream a thing like this? To what end? I never even brought up the concept of submission to jerkwad. Why would it resurface in this manner over a decade later?

Clearly the dream is still bothering me. I keep worrying at it in my mind.

Anyone else with similar experiences? I don't want this guy in my head anymore, but he just lives there.