After seeing the comedy Book Club, Lauren abandons everything and puts her cards on sex.
All of them.
Effective immediately.
It had been one of those extra long blog posts about day-to-day shenanigans, that took me five hours and left me feeling totally disintegrated, that had made me realize:
“Writing is not making me any money.
If I want to build a business doing what I love, I have to put yoga first.”
“Yoga” referred to rebuilding my yoga studio teaching privates, and creating yoga videos.
The videos were not just a good way to do my marketing.
They were also the only way I could make myself do something that resembled a yoga self-practice.
Doing yoga at home was something I had been unsuccessful at for over a decade.
Making two half hour yoga videos was a lot easier.
Or so I thought.
Because the two Madonna yoga videos took me four hours a day. Including preparing the little talk about the song that was the title of the video, and writing a small column in the description box of the video.
I had high hopes I would be able to work more effectively but even then I could never see myself getting it under three hours..
The only reason I was still teaching yoga in the first place, was because the studio was providing a business address.
I had already chosen to go all in for my writing, but soon realized I would still need a business address to register my writing biz at the Chamber of Commerce. In the Netherlands this registration is mandatory; It’s not an option to not do it, if you want to start selling your own books.
Anyway, because my home address is secret, I needed to rent a location.
Ironically, keeping my yoga studio on, was the easiest and one of the cheapest ways to do this.
Also, this was a yoga space, not an office space. I could still earn back my rent teaching yoga.
When I combined my desire for a daily yoga practice, with marketing my private classes, the yoga videos were born. And I also added Madonna, to make it more interesting for myself.
And dear God, after writing that blog post that had taken five hours, and had sucked the life right out of me, it became extra appealing to prioritize the two yoga videos and doing it first thing A.M..
Then I would never have a Writing Hijacked My Day experience again!
I got up at 05.45 to make the videos.
They were still taking four hours or more. I was losing precious time to feeling resistance, and a lack of concentration.
And then the day came when I got up at 05.45 and yet I didn’t make the bloody videos…
Fuck it.
I had assumed, that as long as I would get up on time, the rest would kind of take care of itself.
And I did prepare.
And I got dressed.
And although it had been an awful slow morning, I started filming at a decent enough time. But then I threw away three videos when I was already 15 minutes in or more.
One because I had failed to put on the lights.
One because my neighbor started playing guitar.
And the third because I felt so flat and tired, it was simply unwatchable.
I had already spent over four hours, and I had NOTHING to show for. I was calling it quits. No more yoga videos.
Now I knew that there was something infinitely more dissatisfying than finding yourself drained from writing a blog post;
It was losing hours and hours to creating videos that were ultimately not even made.
Meanwhile, on my latest session with my creativity coach Sara, she had pointed out that my work as the Good Mistress, was just the tip of the iceberg.
I had two books planned on the subject, and created Good Mistress videos, but it was becoming more and more likely that the Good Mistress was only a snipped of a much greater cause;
Sex and relationships as a way to claim ownership of your life.
And to acquire full mastery of it.
This realization had started with me ranting about a comedy called Book Club, about middle aged women reconnecting to their sexuality after reading the 50 Shades trilogy.
What had infuriated me was that despite Anastasia Steele, who surely pushed her boundaries in love and sex by accepting Christian Grey’s invitation to his Red Room of Pain; the four characters from Book Club did no such thing.
There was a maneater who had been trying to protect herself from being hurt, finding love again with her youth love.
That was it.
That was the character development.
And the other three were similar. All staying firmly on the vanilla side of the spectrum.
You can’t possibly start a movie waving around 50 Shades novels, and then let the story end with four mature women finding relationships that would barely satisfy the average twenty year old, and expect the audience to like it.
My expectations had been a little higher than that.
Namely that it is especially in this age group where it is appropriate to differentiate from classic monogamous vanilla love, and start taking way more risks.
What made 50 Shades so erotic, but also controversial within the real BDSM community, was that Anastasia was a virgin, who had no experience with relationships whatsoever.
Being a submissive was not on her request.
Technically he had asked her consent, but in reality she was in no position to say No. It was like offering food to the starving, after you’ve spoiled it with sand.
He never should have done that. Offering sex to a virgin, but only within the context of a dominant and a submissive, was definitely his cruelest act.
That is why it would have been so welcoming if Book Club had shown us, how fabulous the concept of dominance and submissive sex can work in a mature relationship.
And how exciting it can be, to explore all the things your mother warned you about, at a much later age. When you are no longer supervised and no one gives a rat’s ass, about what you do in the bedroom.
Your virginity or your reputation are no longer at stake.
You can’t get pregnant anymore.
And all the other real or imaginary dangers that are connected to teenage and twenties conditioning, are simply no longer valuable.
If they ever were.
Book Club had the potential to show that. That the game Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele had been playing in their twenties, is so much more fun when you’re in your senior years.
It could have saved that marriage in Book Club.
Which was now saved dancing to Meatlove, after hubby had effectively ignored all tie-wrap and Duct Tape hints his wife had dropped.
Book Club settled for being a movie where we learn older people can have sex.
Instead of raising the bar showing that they have the best cards to have THE BEST SEX EVER.
I feel that “forced” monogamy and glorifying chastity, are defendable and to a degree understandable when you’re setting up the rules for young people who want to start a family.
However they can no longer be used when you’re over 40.
Ideally you start off in your teens, having normal sex in safe relationships. And you build that up to exciting sex in safe relationships or normal sex in exciting relationships, whichever you prefer;
And when you’re over 40 you can do both.
You can have exciting sex in exciting relationships.
A mistress usually has normal sex, but in an exciting relationship. It’s not for beginners, but if you’re over 30 and it suits your preferences, the Mistress role could be played.
However, the mistress is only one of the avatars, or archetypes, of having an adult sex life.
There could be so much more.
And even the mistress could up her game by shifting to riskier sex, or by becoming the mistress of two men.
And it was at that moment, discussing how I wanted to put my broader vision out there, supporting amazing sex lives for a mature audience, that it hit me why I was always only interested in sex.
And also why I had felt depleted after writing for five hours over something that was not sex.
Or even why I had felt so much resistance making yoga videos.
Because it was SEX where my message lay.
Not yoga, not building a business, not writing. Not even diary writing unless it was about these deeply transformative shifts.
And with this new insight, I could also start developing my own sexual identity, without having to pin it down to being a mistress.
I could rebrand my whole life to achieving sexual mastership over forty.
That was my new topic.
And I could include my current struggles, that had to do with being a mistress.
The unclear status of my relationship with my lover Mr.Big.
The deadlock with Christopher. Who had chosen not to see me again, now that we knew we had feelings for each other and he was married.
Those struggles would now serve as test cases for achieving that mastery over my sex life. On how to stay the course and get what you want.
Because if my new message was that you could create a brand new and fantastic sex life over forty, then there really was only one way to prove it.
Show it could be done.
<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living
Want to know how you can create your dream sex life?
Follow this blog and watch me do it.
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Gambler is the fourteen chapter from Project M.
tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English.
Dutch American Diary
Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy.
A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover;
As a woman;
And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.
These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009 €15
LS Diary 2012-2013 € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014 €15
Mirage 2014 €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.
De volgende Nederlandse boeken
zijn ook op voorraad bij boekhandel de Feeks in Nijmegen
verzending gratis v.a. € 17,50
Het Boek Benjamin € 45
verzameld werk NL en Engels.
Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.
Mango €15
coming of age novelle
22 erotische verhalen € 15
literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin
Witte Tijgerin €5
gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie
LS Harteveld 