LS Harteveld

The Strange Habit of Mistresses and Their Lovers

Published on May 15, 2018January 4, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

At university, I almost exclusively had male friends. We were ten to one, male to female, so there was absolutely no reason for women to hang out together.
So we didn’t.
Which already gives you a clue who the mistresses will be when they grow up: they’re the ones who hang out with the boys.
And the wives are the ones who come out of nowhere to start hanging out with your boys.

By that time I had already selected my college sweetheart, and we would stay together until we were way over thirty. But every year at least one of my classmates would get into a relationship.
And we, I, would get to witness it.
Which was downright excruciating for me, because I couldn’t stand how those men gave away their power so fricking easily. They didn’t even TRY to stand their ground!
For Christ’s sake.

I know that whenever I tell women I am a mistress (don’t worry, I ve stopped doing that at least within the borders of the Kingdom of the Netherlands) I see women wonder, worry, go over in their minds:
“Oh my God, could my man be having an affair as well?!”
Short answer?
NO.

Not if you could barge into his messy bachelor cave, give his stove a proper scrub, clear out his closets, rearrange his furniture, and dump all his sports medals and souvenirs in the basement where he can go visit them on Sundays.

I did admire those women for their forwardness. My boyfriend was a little messy, but I didn’t foresee how bad it would get. Hoarding is a spectrum, and expresses itself by not having a system to manage your things, because you can still see the value of the object or how you might one day need it.

I met my boyfriend when we weren’t even twenty yet. He just came out of a relationship with his girlfriend from high school with whom he had practically been living together. At her place.
His room had not been used much until he became single and then became my boyfriend.

Initially he was very much into taking proper care of his things. He bought paint and new carpet. And even though he had to do everything by himself, and it was pretty hard to paint or put carpet in a small student room, when you have no place to leave your stuff:
He did it.
He really made himself a home.
He made it, not me.

So of course I was impressed and assumed that he could manage his life. And maybe his mental health did deteriorate later on, and that was the reason he started to create stacks of things and papers, unable to clear them out.
Or maybe it had always been his weak spot but didn’t become apparent until he was well into his twenties.
But no matter how bad it got, I never went through his things. And when we were living together I simply claimed my own room or my own desk, where he wasn’t allowed to put his stuff.

When our relationship stranded I confessed that it had worried me that our house or life would be taken over by his car parts, his tools, his old school books, his twenty ashtrays, and so on. That I had no idea if there was some kind of mechanism that would switch on if it got too bad.

Turned out that mechanism was called NEW GIRLFRIEND.

The woman who came after me was like a decluttering force of nature. I was impressed with how she handled it. This was a man in his thirties with a whole house to clear out:
It was completely next level compared to hooking up with my university friends when we were still in our early twenties and had few possessions.
This was impressive!

And right now I can so see that’s how it was meant to be.
“Those” women are such a blessing for men who drive themselves and others crazy by not being able to organize their lives.
And my boyfriend was very dutiful when it came to work, he had a stable income. He didn’t drink, he didn’t do drugs, he didn’t get into fights.
And he was a nice and fun person to be around with.
So it wasn’t like he wasn’t a wonderful partner: he was.
But he needed someone to take control over his life, and I had not done that in the fourteen years we had been together. Nor would I have ever done that if we had stayed together for fourteen more.
Because a mistress doesn’t do those things.

It’s so strange, because I didn’t know I was a mistress until I became one. But even this aspect, the way I behave versus the way normal girlfriends behave when handling a man’s stuff, speaks volumes on how we’re different.
Although I was emphatic, I never solved his problems for him.
The only thing I did was be clear on my boundaries.

Normal women see a problem they know how to solve, they take over that part of your life and do it for you.
And normal men let them and are probably very happy with it too. Giving up their sovereignty is a fair price to pay because together they can now achieve things they could not achieve on their own.
Manage a household.
Have children.

I was relieved my former boyfriend finally got someone who could help him cope with that part of his life. I saw she was asking a big price, for example he wasn’t allowed to see me anymore. But I didn’t take that personal.
If they ever breakup he knows he can contact me again. No hard feelings. Not at all.

She helped him out in an area where I had felt powerless. But the fact that she was jealous or suspicious of our friendship?
That was totally unnecessary.
Like I said: if you can barge into a man’s life and take over the wheel?
It’s not a cheater.

Now I do risk having to eat my words here, because “bad” men or “cheaters” are susceptible to women promising to save them from themselves…
And hand in their entire deviant life at the promise of being tamed.
But that is usually so short lived.

It is far more likely that a cheater is the one, who does stand his ground. Who didn’t get hitched in college but stayed single or swayed in and out of relationships until he was way over thirty.

The next time a woman wonders if her man is a cheater, I should probably ask:
“Would you dare clear out his closet without asking him?”
If the answer is “no” you should probably worry.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes.
This one was written in written in 1 hour 45 minutes;
Plus half an hour of watching Sex and The City on Carry Bradshaw colonizing Big’s apartment by leaving her toothbrush and hairdryer. A story I ended up not using! 😀 }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

In episode 11 of Season 2 Carrie colonizes Big’s apartment by leaving a blow dryer and a toothbrush. Which Big then casually returns to her!
lol
Anyway, I couldn’t find that one on YouTube
But this one has toothbrushes in it as well.
Pro tip: if a man keeps new spare toothbrushes in the house, he’s a player.
You should probably keep him 😉

Four deliberate choices that accidentally led me to being a mistress

Published on May 14, 2018December 12, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

In retrospect it is all so logical.
Of course I was a secret mistress.
Of course this would be my preferred relationship form.
Of course seeing a man so little was going to keep me in love indefinitely.
Of course.

But the reality is that if you don’t have an example, a role model, it is practically impossible to know what you’re aiming for.
There is a saying in Ayurveda: your body can’t ask for flavors it doesn’t know.
It’s the same with relationships.

As long as you think a mistress is an unfortunate or evil woman who fell in love with a man who’s taken and the poor fellow can’t choose?
You’re not going to want to be that manipulative bitch or woman biting her nails in frustration.
But there is so much more to it.
Like most people I didn’t know that. I simply set one foot in front of the other, and nine years of unsatisfactory dating later, I was a mistress.
And a pretty damn good one.

Not so much technically.
I don’t think I possess anything that makes me a sex goddess, aside from relentless enthusiasm for role playing, if I get to play the submissive part.
That is literally the only thing I can possibly think of that could set me apart from other women. But there are so many men who don’t like that, or absolutely hate it. It barely counts as an asset to be that singular in your likes and dislikes.

So when I say I make a good mistress, I don’t mean I know any special tricks. Being a good mistress means (to me) that I m happy being the other woman. And although I can see it has serious drawbacks, they don’t outweigh the benefits for me.

So if I didn’t know this was the type of relationship that would ultimately suit me best, then how did I end up here?
I’m going to share which guidelines I used. They were my internal compass, from the moment I fell in love with a married man.

#1 choose love over fear

Fear has so many forms.
And they’ll probably all get triggered, the moment you fall in love with someone who’s taken.
Ego fears – that you’re not good enough unless he chooses you.
Fear of loneliness.
Fear of rejection by him and those around you.
“Fear” will have you settle for anyone readily available, who doesn’t bring that kind of baggage.
But only “love” will stay, regardless of the risks.
I never regretted it.

Like I said, I had been dating for nine years before I became a mistress.
I knew exactly how straining sex, dating, hanging out, being boyfriend and girlfriend, anything to putting your order in at the cafeteria, could be when you are with someone you don’t totally admire and are not absolutely fascinated with.
Nor he with you.

But this time I was with someone I actually liked, and he also liked me back!
After nine years of dating men who were often available, kind, and loving, yet with whom things ultimately always turned sour in some way because we didn’t love each other enough;
I now recognized Love immediately.
I wasn’t going to let Fear ruin my party.

#2 Don’t take love away from anyone. Not even yourself.

I’ll admit that when we started out I assumed it was a matter of weeks before he’d choose me. And although I stayed true to my own internal compass, and never pressed him to leave her, nor did I give him an ultimatum – in fact we didn’t even discuss the matter – I was disappointed.
It wasn’t easy to deal with not being The New Chosen One.
Until I realized how much damage it would do, if he actually did get a divorce. How he and his family would have to deal with that tragedy. It immediately became clear to me, that I never wanted that for anyone.
Not for him, and his family.
Not for me.

If his marriage wasn’t meant to be, then so be it. But I didn’t want to be a reason, much less The Reason, it stranded. I didn’t want to be the cause of unhappiness.
So I let their love be their love.
I kept giving him my love.
And receiving his.

This rule, to not take love away from anyone, has been the most important guideline.

#3 Play on his team

Anything that is important to him, is important to me.
Period.
Whether it’s work, or his family: I will not ask to be prioritized ever.
We had a children’s book with stories from Andersen, and it had a story:
What father does is always right.
About a man who made illogical decisions but ultimately made a lot of money because his wife stood beside him, and he took a bet that his wife would be delighted when he came home from a seemingly unfortunate deal he had made.
I am that “wife”:
I will never question my lover’s ability to make the right decisions.

#4 Don’t obsess over getting a giraffe

What I have is a loving relationship with the man I love, who loves me back, and after three and a half years I m still very much in love.
And yet.
So many people would trade that for having a loving relationship with someone they love, who loves them back and THAT DOESN’T EVEN EXIST.
They compare what they have, with something or someone that isn’t there.
I’m not saying you should settle. Never settle! Not when it comes to how much love there is between you, or how he makes you feel.
Don’t settle for someone whose order at the cafeteria you can’t stand.
But if you’ve found someone you like, and he likes you back, then why do you keep obsessing over getting one just like it, but single?
He’s not single!

I compare it to going on safari and you see hunting lions, and elephants with calf, the last white rhino and you get to play with the chimpanzees and yet you want your money back because you didn’t see giraffes.
You can only see a safari as successful if there were giraffes, and therefor didn’t enjoy any of the other animals.

Thinking your holiday was a failure because you didn’t see a giraffe,
or believing your love life is a failure because he’s not single?

They could both be considered a success, it just depends on how you look at it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes. This one was written in written in 2,75 hours. }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The Business Bestie: pets, plush toys and Build.A.Fucking.Empire.

Published on May 13, 2018December 10, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I don’t see her that often, and I have no idea if she minds being in my blogs. So I ll keep it as vague as possible.
But if you would ever meet her, my business bestie -let’s call her BB- the last thing you would think is “vague”.
Because she speaks her truth and her reasoning is razor sharp.
There is no person in the world with whom I feel more at ease as with her.

I am someone (aren’t we all?) who can pick up conflicting energies on what is being said.
Especially from people close to me, who hide those things because they wouldn’t see how it would contribute to our relationship. They don’t want to make their shit my problem.
But I can feel it’s there.

And then I go home and find myself going through everything I said, and what might have triggered their feelings of fear. A draining backlash.
I never have that with BB.

We do have other concerns; to not go too deep.
Because we understand each other so well, and neither one of us is covering things up. But also: neither one of us rests until we know why we are so sad or angry. Or why we are suddenly terrified by the success and responsibilities that lay before us. Our dinner dates have the intensity of a self-help shock therapy intensive:
You come out a different person.

You face paralyzing fears that you normally simply have to brush aside. That you can’t afford to pay too much attention to if you want to build your dream life. And not risk ending up in your rocking chair looking back thinking of all the things you didn’t do because you thought you would get hurt.
Except of course, every now and then you should face your biggest fear. And see it’s still as monstrous as the last time you checked. It may get you killed. Or worse. Yes, there is a worse, not going to share that one. But either way, you face all that shit and yet you do it anyway.
Purpose is not negotiable.

And if you do make it to that rocking chair, you’ll have some great stories to tell. Instead of a life that died inside of you.
Those are the things we speak about.
We purge our minds and reclaim our goals.
And then she excuses herself because she has to put her pet to bed.

Just like I had with my little cat Max, she has a pet who needs a lot of care right now. Which is why we met at her house: because she wants to be there for him as much as she can.
Cuddle, kiss, speak to him.
Feed him snacks and give him his medicine.
And at night she does an extra long session of all of those things, before she tucks him into his bench.

Kylo Ren in his travel pouch his grandma made him

When she’s back I tell her about my doll Kylo Ren.
I bought him after Max died, so that I had something to sleep with. And he could also keep me company on my travels. I have barely been out of the house the last years of Max’ life. When I became mobile again, I wanted something to support my new lifestyle.
Kylo Ren would sleep with me in hotel beds all over the world, go to book readings, and make us new friends by saying:
“Don’t be afraid. I feel it too.”
Because he speaks if you push his tummy.
“This is a him in his travel pouch,” I showed a photo of Kylo Ren to BB.
“My mother made that for him, because I asked. She did think it was a little weird, to make a doll pouch for her middle-aged daughter.”
“Oh no, Kylie has a plush.”
Kylie was one of her other business besties, and she had a plush bear about the size of Kylo Ren.
“But isn’t she some kind of executive?” I asked, slightly puzzled.
“Yes,” said BB.
As if it was completely normal for an executive to carry around a toy. BB explained that the bear had a sleeping bag.
“Just like yours.”
I still couldn’t fully grasp what she was saying.
“You mean she actually takes it to work?”
“Yes. It sits on her desk.”

Here we had it.
Three women who were willing to face opposition and their own deaths if needed, to go after their dreams, who were also fully dedicated to looking after their elderly pets or their dolls.
And I suddenly realized how I had shown BB a paper in my mobile phone. It contained my daily schedule. It said:
1. messaging: write a blogpost
2. self-care: do yoga
3. BUILD. A. FUCKING. EMPIRE.
“I suppose most people would be ashamed to have it so visible,” I had said to BB.
Putting it out there, claiming it boldly IN. CAPITALS. and not being discreet about my ambition, had been so liberating.
But when I saw the three totally badass business babes, taking care of pets and dolls in a way “normal” people would definitely shy away from, I realized what the connection was:
Not just that we were all facing much bigger battles than explaining why we had a doll sitting at our desk- but also:
If you’re facing your deepest fears in order to live your purpose, showing the outside world who you are is no longer something you can hide.
Being authentic is no longer an option.

If you’re going after your dreams, being fully you in all areas of your life, simply
becomes a must.
Don’t be afraid. I feel it too.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes. This one was written in written in 2,5 hours plus fifteen minutes on the Mandy Morris video at the bottom of this post. }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Condoms are sexy

Published on May 12, 2018December 9, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

“Number 1: he’s very handsome.
Number 2: he’s not wearing a wedding ring.
And number 3: he knows I carry a personal supply of ultra textured Trojans with a reservoir tip.”
This is Carrie Bradshaw’s voice-over when she drops her handbag on the sidewalk and a man, who we later get to know as Mr.Big, helps her pick up her things.

She just had a deliberate no strings attached sexual encounter to write about in her column. Which explains the condoms.
But Big doesn’t know that and he probably assumes she is a hooker because later in that same episode, he gives her a lift and asks:
“What do you do for a living?”
And when she answers she’s sort of a sexual anthropologist, he answers:
“What? Like a hooker?”
“No, I write a column.”

I grew up in the eighties and for me carrying condoms had nothing to do with sex work. It was the aids crisis and I saw messages everywhere that anyone, boy or girl, gay or straight, virgin or going steady, simply anybody over the age of fourteen, unwed, and in the possession of a penis or a vagina was completely irresponsible unless you were carrying condoms just in case.

Our sexuality was presented to us as something that could overtake us in the blink of an eye, and turn us into dripping wet or rock hard sexual predators that would not rest until they had come deep inside of you.
Or until they had all their holes filled IMMEDIATELY.
You never know!
Could happen!

Yeah right, in porno that’s where that stuff can happen.
That type of sexual zest is definitely rarer than any of the diseases or teenage pregnancies the condoms were supposed to prevent.

So although we were never programmed to think that condoms had anything to do with being loose in a negative way, we did get an unrealistic image of what our clumsy, insecure sex lives were supposed to look like.

Feeling clumsy and insecure, both physically and emotionally, and then try using condoms. I don’t blame my peers for coming up with excuses why they didn’t need them.
But I was really scared of aids.
Sex education and everything government organizations taught us had gotten a hold on me.
Making me the only consistent condom user of my generation.

It took me decades to even give head without a condom, without relapsing into a panic attack. And even in recent years, the only time I let a man come in my mouth was because it was an accident. Or because he was a jerk.
I also had one lover to whom I agreed he could come in my mouth. But in retrospect he was a jerk too, so the story still stands.

I use condoms when I fuck.
I give condomized blowjobs.
And if I trust you and your medical status, I will give the blowjobs without a condom but you can’t come in my mouth unless you’re a virgin or a jerk.

This is how I ve been doing it for the last five years, and that’s me at my “loosest”. My most irresponsible behavior, ever.

But there’s also good news aside from me not getting myself infected or pregnant.
This strict, fearful attitude towards the dangers of sex turned out to be a one hundred percent match to my sexuality.

I never saw this powerful dark side of myself until recently, so I never realized that having so much fear attached to sex was serving me well.
Very well.
Because my sexuality in terms of needing power-play, needing really intense mental stimuli in order to get aroused, has been with me all my life. Even as a child. I have masturbated from when I was five years old or even younger, and those fantasies have always been a part of it.

The reason the fearful sex education of the eighties shoot root with me, and not with my peers, is that I had the foundation already in place. I had been building my dark, delicious dungeon of sex for ten years, by the time I got the official version of it which belched at me:
“YOU COULD DIE HAVING SEX!”
My subconscious yelped: “Wicked!”

I didn’t know that of course.
I was suffering from anxiety attacks, and tried to keep sex as safe as I could. But the older I get, the easier it is for me to fully own my sexuality.
And one of the aspects of it is that I need safe sex, protected with a condom. I am no longer ashamed of the fact that I ve always used condoms. In my long term relationships as well. It wasn’t until a condom broke with my current lover, that I had a man come inside of me.
And after that we just kept on using them, nothing changed. I got a morning-after pill and we both got tested to ease my anxiety, but otherwise things stayed as they were. For multiple reasons but one of them is:
I need condoms.

The thought of sex with a partner who you trust completely, a partner who’s clean and checked, and you could completely melt together as one, and have that natural feeling, of penis in vagina with nothing in between?
I cannot tell you how unappealing that is to me.

I need the tension, the possibility, that he might have been screwing around and that I don’t know what he’s been up to. That he could infect me with something. I’m still fertile, so for me it’s super practical to use condoms from that perspective as well. But it’s way more the safe sex aspect of it that turns me on.
I am with someone I don’t trust.
That thought is the corner stone of my entire sexuality. And that thought is wiped out the moment we’re not using condoms.

I told a friend I was no longer writing in Dutch. I have chosen English, and I’ve selected the topic too: The return of the mistress.
I will be concentrating on the British market.
“I m going to do for mistresses, what JK Rowling did for wizards,” I explained.
He replied:
“Oh, that could work. I once read something about British men not wanting to have sex with their own wife.”
Trust me.
I know exactly how they feel.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one was written in 2 hours, plus half an hour of Sex and the City research. }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

A mistress’ advice on avoiding dramatic breakups that derail your life

Published on May 11, 2018December 8, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Ten years ago my first relationship as a mistress stranded.
Badly, I have to add.
And in hindsight so much of it was unnecessary.
If I had handled things differently he would have been back, sooner or later.

Fortunately for me, in ending this particular relationship, it didn’t matter that I fucked it up, pushed him away and ruined my chances of every seeing him back. Because five months after the breakup I found out that the reason he had broken up with me right at the moment when we could finally be together and screw our brains out for a couple of months before we’d decide what to do next:

He wanted to be with my best friend.

She had set eyes on him the moment his girlfriend had kicked him out of the house because she had found out about our affair.
Suddenly he had become eligible.
According to her she put him in quarantine where he was supposed to prove he would make a worthy spouse, and neither one of them bothered to inform me on what was going on.

After a three week silence he called to breakup with me. From abroad. He was there for work reasons, but I had never seen him gone for so long. He was simply choosing exile over facing me.
And she pretended to be my friend up until five months after, when she informed me what had been going on and I got three different versions of the story in three days.
None of them that would make me forgive her any sooner than the next.

The benefit of having them screwing each other was that he became damaged goods to me.
It had already been five months since he had broken up with me, but I was still in love, and hoping he would miraculously want me back.
But the moment I heard he was doing her?
Even though she was the most beautiful, gorgeous, sexual woman I knew?
I didn’t want him anymore.
She was like family.
It would be like sleeping with your brother-in-law.

Them being together emptied out my heart of feelings of sadness and longing. And replaced it with hatred and contempt for both of them.
Which felt amazing after feeling powerless for so long.
I realized they had nothing I wanted, but that I had what they thought they would find in each other.

He had expected that one blonde sexual mistress could be upgraded to the next. One who did want children.
One who did believe in marriage.
And he found himself manipulated and was never appreciated for who he was the way he was with me.

And she thought that it had been something about him, that had made him so special to me.
Our affair had contained something she wanted for herself.
When in reality, beauty and everything else are always in the eye of the beholder.
She could never see what I had seen in him.

Naturally, some of this is based on assumption, on stories from acquaintances, on what happened after I erased them from my life.
Some of it is ego.
My ego.

So I won’t pretend that I’m giving you a fact sheet of what happened back then, but the broad strokes are clear. I responded badly to him breaking up with me, and even worse to having them do each other behind my back.
I don’t have much advice on what to do when friends betray you. Although I have grown a bit in that area as well.
I could shed some light on it.

We, as women, overemphasize in all relationships but especially those with female friends, that we have to be nice and warm to each other.
And quickly jump to conclusions that friendships which are not loving are bad for you, because they’re toxic.
When that is really only one way to look at it.

Another is that toxic friends or bad friends, can be very exciting. They push your boundaries, they make you stronger. They make you grow.
Just like bad and evil men make you grow, challenge you, and can be exciting in a way no good boy will ever be.
So hail to toxic friends and lovers.

But at the same time you should never hesitate to take anyone out of your life when they cross your boundaries. Unless you see yourself as some sort of refuge for difficult people, like a sanctuary for mean dogs. And you are willing to let them cross your boundaries in order to take care of them.
Or if you like being challenged.

I could have chosen to keep my friend in my life, just like I could have chosen to stay open to having this lover back. Key word being choose. You don’t have to breakup with someone because they “did something”.
You should only breakup if that something has affected the feelings you have for your friend or lover.
Not as a punishment.

In this case five months of lying to me, was a deal breaker for how I felt about our friendship. Sleeping with my friend a deal breaker for my feelings for him.
I wasn’t punishing them.

This is relevant, because a punishment, or having a fight over something, is something you do to someone you want to continue seeing. Which is why people often think marriages with a lot of fighting are bad. They’re not. They’re a sign of two people desperate to make it work.
I never fight.
I never punish.
I simply leave and I never change my mind or go back.

So the room for improvement I see in my way of how I could have handled both the friendship and the lover are hypothetical. I wouldn’t have wanted any one of them back.
But I didn’t know that and had he broken up with me for other reasons, I would have responded equally bad and then I would have wanted him back.
So here’s my tip.
On how to keep your cool when he breaks up with you. And not just on the surface but internally as well.

This tip will absolutely maximize chances of not having your life shook to its core, as well as chances of him wanting you back.
And not in a crawling back manner either.

Here’s the tip to keep someone who’s breaking up with you or betraying you:
Behave in a way that will make both him/her and you, feel good about what you had.

In my case it was a man so “he”. Nathan.
He would have felt appreciated and capable of handling difficult situations. And the moment he would have started feeling bad or in doubt, he’d remember the last time he felt really good: it was with you.

It was the moment he got it into his head that he wanted to breakup with you – that’s when you made him feel good about himself.
Trust me.
He could be back within a week.
Which is why you must only do this with someone who you consider the love of your life.

So, what’s the trick right?
It’s two steps:
One is for when he breaks up.
One is for the hours, or days, or years if necessary, after.

Step one. The breakup.
Put yourself in his shoes and be genuinely concerned for his well being.
Whether you receive a phone call from abroad, a two hour conversation in a public place where you won’t make a scene, or a post-it note like Carrie Bradshaw did in Sex and the City, your response should always be somewhere along the lines of:
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. It must have been so difficult for you. I fully understand and I wish you all the best. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.”
And then you go home an cry your lungs out 😀
If you have to.
Unless you apply step two.

Now the first thing you can do at home, before step two, is to actually be concerned for his well being. To feel, or re-feel the significance of what you just said, and the empathy you felt for him. The moment you focus on him?
Of course, you want the best for him.
Of course, you don’t want to stand between him and the life of his dreams.

But then there is a way to move even deeper into your acceptance of the situation by acknowledging that this was not your choice and that you do still love him. And that his rejection doesn’t mean that you were loving the wrong man. Feeling love will go on for as long as it has to.
Which could be a lifetime.
And that’s okay.

It means that you really chose that person as your muse, your idol, as a symbol of everything that was and is good in life. But then when that person leaves you, rejects you, that is in itself no reason to start doubting your heart.
Your heart led you to the place where it could give the most love.

Yesterday, when the topic of this blog post and the powerful meaning of loving someone who is no longer there was sinking in, I changed the background pictures on my phone. Last year my best friend Whatsapped me a series of photos from 2009 of me and my two cats. I chose one that pictured both Max and Willem, as my screen lock. And one that had the 2009 version of me and Max, as my startup screen.
It only dawned on me today that unconsciously, I had been using the insights I’m sharing today. I was trying to heal from the biggest blow my heart has gotten in the last few years. In 2015 I lost Willem. And five months ago I lost Max.
I have never felt so alone in my entire life.

I have literally said to people, that the moment Max died in my arms I felt like I was going insane with grief and added:
“I haven’t felt this bad since 2008 when Nathan broke up with me.”
It was pure despair.
And today, less than 24 hours after changing the pictures, I can already feel it healing. And I can feel that they are still with me. Both of them. I got out of touch with Willem, after he died and Max was still alive.
My relationship with Max grew so strong, almost symbiotic.
But now that they are both on the other side, and their pictures on my phone remind me of my love for them, and the time we spent together, I can feel the pain transcending into something else. Something independent of their existence on the physical plane.

I remember when Nathan broke my heart, and I felt so bad, that everybody was really nice to me. But the only one who grasped the full magnitude of what was going on, and also hinted at the direction where I could find a solution to my pain, was my mother.
My mother is really loving, patient, without judgement and she will never push anything onto you. In my days or weeks of despair after the breakup, my mother acknowledged that I was feeling really bad, and listened to me telling how great he had made me feel.
She said: “You know, that was really never him. Those feelings are inside of you.”

People can leave you, you can get separated, or someone can die. They can exchange you for the next best thing. But never let any of that trick you into thinking you have to change anything about your feelings for them.

The love is always yours to keep.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 3 hours }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Six-steps-to-motivation pants and an infinite bra collection

Published on May 10, 2018December 8, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

This post is going to be confrontational for anyone who used the Konmari Method. And I don’t mean in the half-assed way I did. I didn’t even bother to put all my clothes on one pile before I started, and just did it drawer by drawer.
And I didn’t go looking for clothes which she warned were “everywhere around the house, you’d be surprised!”
Which might explain why my collection of tiny pants, which up until 2015 had been hiding in the basement, was never fully purged.

First of all I don’t purge my basement very often.
I estimate once every two years. And those were years where I basically moved every one or two years, so now that I have a permanent address it might be less.
I know I purged the basement a year ago, when my best friend migrated to the USA and I offered her storage space. But even then my tiny pants were no longer there. They were already in a box in my wardrobe. The box does get opened and I inspect them regularly. And never with the intention to throw them out!
The reason I keep coming back to my box of tiny pants is that they’re absolutely fascinating.

I m so glad that Konmari’s decluttering method never worked to the level that I originally thought would have been ideal. That I never got myself to throw out this ever expanding box of pants I didn’t fit. They were both a reminder of my past, as well as hope for the future: I was convinced they would one day fit.

So yesterday, after writing my New Body Manifesto (aka The Sex Worker Manifesto I suppose, because it was pretty obvious which women I found most inspirational when it came to matters of self-care) I got my tiny pants out.

Now the box doesn’t just contain pants: it also has a wide variety of tiny bras!
I remember having my chest measured after losing ten kilos in 2005, and she said I had 75 centimeters, maybe even 70 centimeters, with a D cup.
Not C!
Smaller chest sizes have a different cup size. So when I lost ten kilos I had accidentally went from a C to D cup. I really needed time to come to terms with my new status as sex bomb and remember not buying a bra that day.
First I had to process this.
So from that time on, I started buying 75D. But as I gained weight, and my chest was strangled by the tight strap, I started increasing the size.
But I kept forgetting my size and bought too small.
I have a large collection 80 C bras, when I never actually had that size. I didn’t start buying new bras until I was a 85C.
So my relationship with bras is definitely more complicated than with my pants.
My pants are really motivational.

My mother was the first to use this trick on me, and maybe she created the root cause. Because when I got potty training she bought me three panties:
One dark blue, one red, one yellow.
They had contrasting prints on them (the blue one had yellow duckies and the yellow one green clovers) and a matching contrasting color on the borders as well.
She hung the panties on a line outside, it was summer. And my potty was also outside. We had a very secluded garden so it wasn’t like she was trying to make me pee in front of the whole neighborhood. But I vividly remember being motivated by the three panties that would be mine the moment I did whatever I was supposed to do on the potty.

Back to the pants.

In 2005 I dropped ten kilos and I remember just fitting the pair of Marlene Dietrich pants (do they call it like that internationally as well?) at the bottom of this pile.
See photo.
But it wasn’t very comfortable, and I never wore them aside from trying to fit into them.
Which is why I’m dating it “1998” because that is the year I was in Australia, and I wore them to work.
So I m positive they fit me then.

That’s how I will go through the whole pile:
I will date it the last year I recall they still fit me.

Marlene Dietrich pants, from Zij
color: dark blue
size: 38
last worn: 1998
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
These were my first pants that had some sort of professional look. In the eighties I had a classmate who always bought her clothes at Zij. And she (unwittingly) inspired me to shop there as well.
I think these pants were bought in the early nineties.
In order to fit them I would have to weigh way under 60 kilos, and/or have a super toned waistline.
The last time I was this thin was one week in 2008 when I was totally stressed out because of medical shit that was going on.
So far, that has been the only thing that made me drop under 60.

Freesoul jeans
color: dark blue
size: 29 32
last worn probably in 2008
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
Reconstructing my body weight and history, 2008 must have been the year I was at my smallest, and these pants are definitely extremely tiny.
I remember fitting them only for a very brief period.
Maybe as little as a few months.
Just like the next pair.

white Mango jeans
size: 38
last worn: 2009
how far I can get it on: 1/3 of my thighs
The post-it says 2008, but that’s the year I bought it, in the city where I was dating an Israeli spy. Or someone equally sketchy :p
Who knows.
But the added bonus of having that much anxiety attached to your dating, is that I do remember what I did the few days I was there. And one was buying these pants. They fit me more than one summer, and I have a picture of 2009 when I m still wearing them, so the post-it should have said:
2009

capri jeans Esprit
size: 38
last worn: 2012, fortieth birthday
how far I can get it on: halfway my thighs
On my fortieth birthday I posed for a photo in bikini top and these pants. Although I was happy with my body, I remember being surprised that I could still fit into these pants because I was at least a couple of kilos heavier than I wanted. I liked my body but I did hope the photo was me at my biggest, and that it would inspire me to shed the pounds once again.
Just like I had in 2005..
In retrospect that was me at my thinnest in many years to come.

pink capri Mexx
size: 38
last worn: 2016
how far I can get it on: 14 centimeters to close
This has been my absolute favorite set of pants for over a decade. I remember buying it April 2005, at a flea market. It didn’t fit. But then something happened.
I started losing weight.
It’s even safe to say these pants motivated me to lose the weight..
The pink capri, which I bought on Queensday so that’s why I know it was in April, were my first pair of motivational pants since my mother put the panties up to get me home trained 🙂
Last year I still fit them early spring. Then I got too big.
I dated the pants “2016” and not “2017” because they were not comfortable anymore.. I can’t wait to fit into them again.

Pall Mall Export jeans
size: 32-32
last worn: never
how far I can get it on: 8 centimeters to close
These were pants that were supposed to fit. They are the same size as my current jeans, so when I saw these, last Kingsday on the flee market, I thought they would fit me.
God knows I don’t need more pants that are too small! lol
But they didn’t. They will be the first that I can wear once the pounds come off. So they’re the first milestone.

My pants are my measuring system for this challenge. I’m not going to weigh myself, but I’m about 74 kilos. So that makes it 15 kilos to drop.
There have been two changes in my diet, which people say attribute to weight loss.

One is that I stopped drinking alcohol a few weeks back.
Which I did because I wanted full awareness for my work and life, and I know I m prone to balancing out work with drinking. Not more than six glasses a week. After having an accident at home and hurting myself, after a long workday, and writing an extra blog post with two glasses of wine, I was done with taking risks with my health this way.
No more accidents.
No more wine.
I have had periods where I didn’t drink in the past, and I ve never lost weight over them. I m just mentioning this because that’s what people will say attributed.

Same goes for my diet: I eat three times a day, no snacks. Not even coffee with milk if I can help it. I m not super strict with it. I believe in particular that a social life is also important and you can’t always choose what, or the moments at which, you eat.
Also: Way back in time, for about six months, I didn’t eat till noon. And that too didn’t make me lose any weight.
I ve been on this habit of eating three times all you can eat, and there are days where this probably cuts my calorie intake in half, and yet I ve lost zero weight.
So this (intermittent fasting) too is something that people will say attributes to (my) weight loss, when in fact it never did in the past.
Nor has it done any such thing the past six weeks or so.
It doesn’t have to either because I m fine knowing my organs have half the work to do. And I chose this diet because it protects my teeth from getting sugar all the time.

The most important inspiration, motivation and “plan” I’ve got, is that I ve come to realize that if I see my body as a commodity, something I need to keep fit and healthy for my work. I now see it and treat it entirely differently.
I coyly referred to it as the Sex Worker diet, but for me it really was a breakthrough to start taking care of my body in a non-emotional or attached way. But simply because that’s what you do, if you make money from it.
A writer writes.
A photo model or sex worker trains their body.
End of story.
That and six gorgeous set of pants that are waiting for me, down the road.
And an infinite collection of bras to choose from.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 2 hours and 15 minutes }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

example video of a Konmari cleanse:

Treating myself to a new body for my birthday

Published on May 9, 2018December 8, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

For a while now, I’ve been moderately obsessed with getting my old body back. And I’ve restarted this challenge at least once a week and often even had the audacity to publicly announce my physical transformation.
Only to then never speak of it again when I dropped off the wagon of doing more yoga and working less.
And instead didn’t do any yoga and worked even harder than ever before.
So I never got “there”.

Just yesterday, within days after cutting a deal with myself that these blog posts were going to be written in an hour, so that I had a chance of taking care of my basic physical needs with yoga, home cooked meals, daylight and a bike ride, I turned myself inside out at my writing desk and came up with a piece that stretched three hours and three decades.
Bye bye basic needs.
I did have a bike ride though, because I always clean the yoga studio on Tuesdays. So then the bike ride is work, which means there is a hundred percent higher chance that I’ll actually prioritize it.

So I was in the city, and my day had went awol first because of the way too long blogpost and then by a draining but effective series of phone calls and paperwork for last week’s creditcard fraude.
I was now walking the streets with an envelop, which I could not post anywhere because postal services have removed half of their mailboxes. To keep my spirits up, I was eating a double scoop of Belgian cream.
That’s when I “ran” (I could not have been strolling slower, honestly. Looking around halfheartedly for mailboxes) into Disciplined Friend.

Like all Disciplined Friends I have, he has an irrepressible urge to downplay his own achievements and to remind you of how many times he slacked and didn’t run, lift weights, or do yoga. Depending on which disciplined friend it is.
Disciplined Friend was in his running gear, and he was cooling down.
So we had a little chat.

I confessed to him that whenever he posted his run on Facebook, it inspired me.
From what I hear that is an atypical response to workout updates.
There’s even a meme:
“Unless you find a dead body on your morning run, I don’t want to know about it.”
I have that with family updates.
So unless we’re talking life or death situations, or photos of your cat, I would much rather know if you worked out.

I told him that I sometimes wished he would text me, to announce that he would go running. It would be crucial that he did this before he went, not after.
And then I would pause writing my lengthy blog posts, postpone calling creditcard companies, and do an amazing one hour super-intensive yoga session, that totally transformed my body and my life.
And I would do that three to four times a week.
And it would be amaaaayzing.
“And then of course I think: There’s an app for that,” I concluded my story.

I quickly started licking my ice cream all the way around because it was really hot and I couldn’t afford having a conversation.
I saw the letter in my hand already contained ice cream stains as well.

We said our goodbyes, I found a mailbox, cleaned my studio, taught my classes, and sat myself down for my last hour of the day, which is sacred time. I clear out my running diary, go through all the notes of that day, transfer them to my diary or notebooks and cross off all the pages that don’t contain relevant information anymore.

I could see where I had “lost” my resolution to do yoga: on days when I already have six hours of designated work, I can’t afford writing a three hour blog post and then expect to do an hour of yoga as well.
But also; the eating.
It’s not that I can’t have an ice cream, but I knew I was slipping back into my habit of needing food in order to make myself keep up with everything I have to do. I use food as fuel. Whereas when I’m writing? Journaling? Taking a personal development training?
I can go up to seven hours without needing food, water or Wifi.

So Monday and Tuesday are my most challenging days in terms of self-care but they also set me up for the rest of the week. If I don’t do yoga then, I don’t do it the rest of the week either.
Same goes for snacking.
If I drop my “diet” of three times a day all you can eat, in favor of Belgian ice cream on Tuesday afternoons, I will easily slip into eating whatever crosses my path, twenty-four seven.

And I thought of my ideal body, my ideal lifestyle, and that every year for the last decade I had slipped away further. I have a photo in bikini top and jeans, from my 40th birthday. I vividly remember having it taken and thinking:
“Hmmm… I can’t believe I still fit into these pants. I’m way heavier than I want to be. But my belly looks nice. I hope this photo inspires me to take the extra pounds off.”
That was five years and eight kilos ago.

And then, like a lightning rod, it struck me. A powerful vision of exactly the way I want my body to be.
Lean.
Bendy.
Professional.
It was as if my two ideal bodies, those of porn star Stoya and of escort Avery Moore mixed together with a new vision of Who I Wanted To Be, the second half of my life.
I wanted their photo model, bendy, beautiful pale bodies.

What was different from all the resolutions I had before, was that I no longer felt resistant to work for it. For the first time in my life I saw my body as a commodity, something that could pay the bills.
Which isn’t even that far off considering I am a yoga teacher, and the only offers I have gotten as a writer is to pose half nude or fully nude.
In “exchange for free publicity”.
I don’t know why I put quotation marks there, since it means exactly what it says. I said no, or hell no, or fuck no, but I do acknowledge that a writer with a killer body is definitely more newsworthy than a middle aged woman struggling to keep the pounds off.

It was clear to me that my decision to commit to this daily blog, and thereby a decision to get serious with my writing, could only be followed by a decision to be just that driven in getting the sex worker body to match it.

I wonder if there’s an app for that.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

{ to keep these little gems aka blogposts from hijacking my day I set the intention to write them in sixty minutes, but this one took me 2 hours and 15 minutes }

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Fear got me thinking I was anything less than Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell

Published on May 8, 2018October 30, 2021 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Updated post.
First chapter of small, soon to be (re-)published book, solely about Basic Instinct and Catherine Tramell.
Subscribe to this blog to receive a notification, or check my shop if it’s already printed.
2021 10 29 | Lauren Harteveld

I’ve been fascinated with Catherine Tramell from the moment she appeared on the screen.
And then I’m not counting the opening scene of Basic Instinct, where a naked, anonymous blonde with the same breasts as Sharon Stone murders a retired rock ‘n’ roll star and we’re supposed to assume that was her, but the first time we see her face.
This is after detective Nick Curran and his partner Gus have arrived at the beach house of a sexy as hell, blonde, millionaire writer (!!) to ask her where she was the night of the murder.
“How long were you dating him?” Nick asks.
“I wasn’t dating him,” Catherine Tramell answers. “I was fucking him.”
Mind blown!

It was 1992.
I was twenty and in a steady relationship because of two reasons.
One was that I wanted to lose my virginity and secure having a good and steady sex life after.
And the other reason I chose a steady relationship was because I got such bad anxiety attacks from giving oral sex without a condom, because I was so afraid of hiv/aids, that staying single and at risk was definitely not an option anymore.
I had enough of nights trembling alone in my bed, afraid to tell anyone why I was so afraid. I had obviously put myself at risk by doing that and now I could get really sick and nobody was going to love me anymore.

I had a deep understanding that I wasn’t strong enough, or tough enough to deal with that shit.
So at seventeen I threw in the towel, and went steady.
Like a normal person.

Except that a normal person would probably not see Basic Instinct about ten times in cinema (there was a time when they ran it for 2.50 per ticket).
Not rent the VHS a couple of times, at a time when they didn’t have their own player and had to rent that as well.
Not buy a Basic Instinct dvd as soon as they had a dvd player and then to top it all off, buy Basic Instinct 2 on dvd as well.
Together with three other people 😉

Those were signs that something was up underneath the good girl “facade”. Facade obviously doesn’t stand for that I would cheat. It’s actually surprisingly easy to stay faithful if you think cheating will get you killed.
Facade means that everything in my teens had been about me loving sex so much, but also the thrill of being in love, and with new men, and clothes that come off for the first time.
Nothing in me had dreamed or longed for a long term relationship, aside for the longing to put an end to the anxiety attacks.
It was all so obvious.
In hindsight.

images (2) — Basic Instinct 2 has some unusual clothing colors

Because in 1992, I was absolutely certain I had zero in common with Catherine Tramell, except the farfetched wish that I had been anything like her.
Wouldn’t that be awesome!
“I wasn’t dating him. I was fucking him.”
Man, that would be worth a million, to be that emotionally contained.
But I knew I wasn’t, and I just focused on her style of clothing, adopted some of that. Which I still do till this day. I always wear white long coats, only wear uni (never print), and my entire wardrobe consists of black, white, grey, beige, dark blue, every flavor pink, and bright red.
That’s it.
Aside from pink and red, those are all Catherine Tramell colors, and smooth fabrics.
In Basic Instinct 2 they gave her two furry coats. One dark brown, one green. I immediately was all like:
“She would never wear that!”
Maybe the stylist of Basic Instinct 2 went on maternity leave and somebody else stepped in, but it looked totally out of character. Maybe the critics were right it was a bad movie.

Later on, when I became a blogger, I sometimes presented myself as Catherine Tramell, by using stills from the movies. But for me it was more tongue in cheek. Surely nobody would think I was that sassy, that chic or anything like her.

Because although I have learned to manage my fear of hiv/aids, to a degree where I actually could have a life where I fuck people, not date them, my sexual orientation turned out to be a little bit different than Miss Tramell’s.
Because I’m a monogamist: I like to have only one lover, one pair of hands touching me, one dick to give blowjobs to.
Thinking I would ever go around having multiple lovers, was more an idea that stemmed from thinking that was simply how a sexually free woman would live. And how I would live too, I assumed, if I didn’t have all that fear holding me back.

That image, or ideal, had nothing to do with who I was and what really made me tick. I know now that for me one partner is ideal. If I ever fall in love with two men at the same time, I’ll up my game. But me preferring one partner doesn’t have anything to do with fear anymore.

Because something else about my arrangement, is very exciting. Not to say nerve wrecking.
And although I speak very little of this – as if I’m so worried that only confessing I feel this way, and that it does scare me, and that I don’t have anxiety attacks yet but that I can feel the layer of calm and collected is so very thin – is this:
I am a secret mistress and that might get me killed.

After more than three years, and working through a ton of inner stuff, I own being secret mistress.
I’m not ashamed of it.
I have many things to tell about it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And yet… I cannot stop being scared that this could cost me my life.
Either by social exclusion or literally, because someone wants revenge.
I know my lover will leave me.
No way he could afford standing up for me, when all hell breaks loose. He would have to choose her side, even if she does give him his appropriate punishment of whatever she thinks he deserves. But nobody will take it out on him.
They will project that on me.
Because somebody has to pay for the betrayal of his wife. And it only takes one person with aggression issues who thinks that way.

That thought sickens me to my stomach.
Like I said, I could easily flip into having anxiety attacks over this. And I’m currently planning out how I want to proceed with my writing career:
If I want publicity yes or no.
If I want a regular publisher yes or no.
If I want to even be known in the Netherlands, or if I want to immediately focus entirely on the English market? Or is that decision based on fear for the Dutch market? Fear of getting killed for my ideas?
And if it’s based on fear, then is it a bad thing?
Those are my thoughts.

And I actually considered, and I haven’t told this to anyone, to end my relationship..
To stop being a secret mistress.
And to say: “Yes, I was a secret mistress, but when I realized I had to choose between telling my story and risking my life, or staying quiet, I ended it. I am more a writer than a lover.”
That’s legit.

And it would take the sharpest edges of my mistress status, and of the hatred that it could trigger, since I would now be an ex-mistress.
Except it would not be me any more than locking myself up in long term relationships from age seventeen to thirty-four was. I was hiding from the real me then, because I couldn’t deal with the threat of death and social exclusion.
And I was considering running now, either from my career as a writer, or from my relationship, because I couldn’t deal with the threat of death and social exclusion now.

It was exactly the same scenario and the sequel was not becoming a particularly good movie.

Until I realized something that my lover, this lover that I have now, pointed out to me at the beginning of our relationship.
I informed him about my fear of std’s, but we also fantasized together about sex that was really exciting and didn’t fit into the warm, cuddly, intimate corner of sexuality.
There wasn’t anything we didn’t both look forward to test out, play out, dive right in.
We were a match made in heaven and I had finally found someone willing to play at my level of desired sexual tension.
“No wonder you need this,” he said, after we had spoken of yet another thing that would be a very hard limit in most relationships. “You grew up being so scared of aids. It was so filled with tension. Unless the pressure is dialed up, you don’t feel a thing.”

In all those years, I had never looked at it that way.
But of course, he was right.

I’ve always had, perhaps “unsettling” is the best word, sexual fantasies, but the aids phobia certainly amplified it. From that moment on I would always associate sex with risk. The only time I didn’t, was in my long term relationships. We had great sex but I only felt the thrill, I only felt truly alive the first couple of months.
Then it died.
Everything after that didn’t move me to my core, because I knew I was safe.

The tagline, or subtitle of Basic Instinct 2 is Risk Addiction.
It is explained when a psychiatrist evaluates Catherine Tramell for her trial:
Psychiatrist: “Her behavior is driven by what we call a risk addiction.
A compulsive need to prove to herself that she can take risks. And survive dangers others can’t.”
Judge: “Why would a person do that?”
Psychiatrist: “The greater the risk, the greater the proof of her omnipotence. Her existence, really.”

I know that my current relationship, as a secret mistress of someone who totally supports me in my sexual fantasies, is the best thing that ever happened to me. I am so happy I found him, and that we have a relationship form that will always push me, and test me, and yes it frightens the shit out of me.
I still don’t know how to balance the risks of fame or speaking up for my sexual orientation.
But I do know that I need risks in order to “get it up”.

That I will ever be satisfied having sex the way normal people do, is an illusion.
Judge: “When you say she has a risk addiction, is this condition likely to get worse?”
Psychiatrist: “I think the only thing that’d stop her, I suspect the only limit for her, would be her own death.”

~Lauren
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Books

My diaries are available at LULU
New books, among which a book about Basic Instinct and Catherine Tramell, will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

I m taking the red pill to abundance and success

Published on May 7, 2018October 27, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I think I got the idea from a more or less unrelated, yet totally compelling book title from Kat Loterzo:
Show Me Your Soul : There is a Magic Pill: You’re Just Too Scared to Swallow It
It brought me the idea to use a placebo for something which had been bothering me for seven years, on and off: my irregular menstruation cycle.
I thought:
“If I take placebo pills twenty-one days straight, just like a real contraceptive, and then stop for a week, the menstruation should come exactly on the second day after I stop. My cycle will be exactly twenty-eight days.”
And it worked!

The first cycle kind of bounced off: the menstruation indeed did come, on the planned day. But I was totally taken aback by it. I didn’t even feel I had gotten my period. I was still in bathing robe, just coming out of the shower. And what I noticed was blood on the white laminated floor.
EVERYWHERE.
And running down my thighs, and I wiped it all clean but it just kept on running. I was immediately full on! But I cleaned it all up, put my menstruation cup in, and started my yoga and fitness.
But then later on, when I wanted to change the cup?
NOTHING.
It had completely, one hundred percent stopped.
I couldn’t even find traces of blood on the cup, it was completely gone.

I even considered that I had gone mad, that I had hallucinated that morning. But the tissues in the bin proved that I was not losing my mind.

A friend reconstructed for me that it had been the abdominal exercises in the fitness series, that had stopped it. Those were not full inversions, but I had been on my back lifting my hips off the ground slightly.
“Do you have a tilted uterus?” she asked me.
“Because if your uterus is tipped backwards, a small inversion is a full inversion internally.”

She told me all the signs and I added up all the experiences I had with sex, doctors and my menstruation cup.
And I realized she was right:
I had a tilted uterus.

Suddenly everything began to make sense.
Especially my struggle with the menstruation cup.

What no one tells you, not even the manual when this very much SHOULD be in the menstruation cup manual – is that a menstruation cup is nearly impossible to remove if you have a tilted uterus.

And that even after practice a woman with a tilted uterus will never have the clean, easy removal procedure that they pretend it to be in the videos and the manual. I ve read stories of women having to visit clinics, because they couldn’t get it out after the first time they inserted it.
It took me hours to get it out the first time.

And I m over forty with a hell of a lot experience. And I still make a mess every time. But the worst part of it was that I felt stupid because all the videos said it was so easy. And the manual said it was so easy. And I therefor assumed that it was like tampons:
Something that’s only difficult the first time.

So despite my messy start and feeling clumsy (I now realize anything short from ending up in ER is a job well done), I thought I could quickly catch up with the herd, and be like all the other pussies.
But pussies are not social animals.
And from everything my friend told me, my pussy was part of the ten percent that belonged to a subspecies that will respond differently to deep penetration, minimal inversions, and menstruation cups.

Long story short:
So although the pills worked on the first cycle, I made my menstruation disappear. I didn’t see it back for a whole week, and then it returned.
I took my stop week and then I refilled my pill bottle with twenty-one new pills. Every morning I chewed a vitamin C tablet, thinking:
“I’m taking my pill and my menstruation comes two days after the box is empty.”
And from thereon forward, my cycle has been in mint condition.

I also had a second placebo: a jar with a sticker that said “19forEver” and it contained Smarties.
I have no idea if that brand is available outside the Netherlands, but they’re basically chocolate M&M’s.
I took one every morning to get my nineteen year old body back. But I wasn’t seeing any results, despite the fact that I had been doing this for half a year.

I did like the practice of eating one Smartie every morning (who wouldn’t?) and I did think something about being thin and young, when I chewed it, but apparently the kilos were a lot more stubborn than my hormones.
And then something happened.

A young Dutch writer published his second book.
From a very young age, he has done everything that he possibly could do, to ensure he would be the hottest, richest, most successful author of his generation.
And then he DID become that.
Despite all the cynicism and sour responses from a lot of other authors (although not all! there are those who love him!) you should admire the fuck out of him for simply being that determined.
That driven.
That strong.

You could simply admire and respect him for everything he has achieved, without ever reading a word he writes, because the only thing that brought him where he is today is not his brilliant publisher;
It’s not all the talkshows that fight to get him on their show;
It’s not even the books he wrote.
It’s HIM.

He got to rock star level status, because that’s what he decided he was going to be. And just like I get infuriated every time someone refers to Madonna as “one of the biggest stars of the Universe” -I usually yell back: “One of the biggest? Really? Who you gonna bring?!”- I have the same thing with him.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate his writing, I do, but the miracle about him, is his mindset.
His ambition.

It was his second book release that sparked something within me. I want that. I don’t want his version of success, so naturally my path and the choices I make will be entirely different. But I do know, and this vision has been developing over the past few weeks, what I want.
And it got me thinking:
“What if I had a red pill to success?”
Because I remembered the title from the Kat Loterzo book, and for whatever reason I thought she was talking about a red pill.
The red pill of success.

And I went into the kitchen and I got my jar with Smarties out, and I put all the red ones in a separate jar. These would be my success pills.
And I realized I wasn’t too happy with the results of my 19forEver jar, which contained mixed Smarties. Maybe it didn’t work if you kept all the colors in. It needed to look like real pills, not a carnaval of colors. I took all the colors out, except for the green ones. They would be my 19forEver pills.

So now I have three placebos.
“The pill; Tablets that I take three weeks on, one week off.
The green pill; That will make me age backwards and reshape my body to its nineteen year old form.
And the red pill of success.

And I m so not afraid to take it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 26, 2020

I just updated this post, 2,5 years later, and I m so happy I found this post back!
I was toying with the thought of telling someone about my tilted uterus, because it makes such an interesting, and also slightly terrifying and yet sexy in a deviant way story;
But I had forgotten how I ever found out I have a tilted uterus!
And now I know, because I found this post back.

And I also need them color-coded pills back;
I m on previously mentioned non-effective carnaval colors!
No wonder they ceased to work.

Ever since I started updating these posts, I don’t think there ever was one, who was this informative.
From my past self to the current day one.
I call that a success already

~Lauren

Meanwhile, should you be Dutch, the topic of this blog post is related to a Dutch book I wrote.
In 2018 I made a reference of this book at the bottom of this post, and I decided it was so much fun, I’d leave it in 😉

“Getergd door een rits onduidelijke medische klachten, besluit Lauren geen suiker meer te eten, geen Chardonnay meer te nemen, en geen latte macchiato’s meer te drinken.

Na een paar weken is ze zo apathisch dat ze zelfs vergeet te masturberen.

Tot een jonge Marokkaanse god op tv verschijnt die tegen Lauren zegt; “LauRRRen! WakkeRRR woRRRden! Ik ben ook schRRRijveRRR en ik heb ook een leuk leven!”
Dat is zo.
Sam doet de vier s’en.
Hij schrijft, hij sport, hij sekst en hij slaapt.

Ineens weet Lauren nog steeds niet waar het naartoe moet met haar leven, maar ze is wel klaarwakker. Zeker als ze erachter komt, dat Sam binnen een week een optreden geeft bij haar om de hoek.

Sam doet haar denken aan een verboden relatie met haar leerling, iets waar ze gemengde gevoelens over heeft.
Sam wil die best met haar onderzoeken, maar hij vraag een prijs…”

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop

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The 60 Minute Writer: Let’s get this baby started

Published on May 6, 2018October 25, 2020 by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Last Friday, I set out to write something really simple about mistresshood.
Instead it became this meaty piece, called The Mistress Manifesto: in praise of an unknown sexual preference
that left me feeling shaky and insecure. An inevitable result from being creative, or at least from my writing style.
It drains you.

Which doesn’t mean that I suffer while doing it!

The writing makes me greedy for more and the thrill of self-revelation is so powerful that I always cut deeper than I intended to, because it fascinates me how far I can take this.
But after hitting publish I’m all like:
“Ouch.”
“Good God.”
“Christ this feels awful.”

My lower back hurts, I’m hungry as fuck, and I can barely convince my mind to reunite with my body. And in a pitch dark, cold house, I make a firm resolution that tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, I will discipline myself by doing yoga in the mornings, taking healthy bike rides in the sunlight, and indulging in some light writing in the afternoon, while listening to Chopin.

And yet instead, I get up and start up my computer with my mouth still full from breakfast to jot down just one teeny tiny thing.
It will only take ten minutes.
And then I get sucked right back into it, and spit out four hours later, still in my pajamas thinking:
“How the hell did that happen?!”

And if I’m lucky, or if I have evening obligations, then “It” grabs me only once a day. But if I don’t have appointments outside the house, it is very well possible that It either holds me hostage to create not one, but two pieces of content, back-to-back.
Or that It hijacks my evening and makes me create something else.

Usually by seductively presenting it as a “quick and easy idea, that will be fun!”.
It is treacherous, the Genie of Creativity.

So tonight I’m asking “It”;
My Untamed Creativity;
My Calling to speak on behalf of Mistresses;
My Purpose to write every single day of my life;
God;
The Universe;
The Forces that Matter AND the ones that don’t but that would like to have a say in this anyway;
Can we PLEASE for the love of everything we would like to create together, keep this short and sweet, and write for sixty minutes on days when it would also be nice to have some sort of physical exercise.
See daylight.
Have proper meals.
A social life.
Work on my new books.
And not make this daily blogging into an all or nothing thing, where I need to fight you off, unless I m prepared to pay your price from anything between three hours to my left arm.

You already had a go at my left thumb two weeks ago, when I got it stuck in the door, on the first night of my holiday after a full workweek, two glasses of wine, and three hours of writing.
I still have this black nail here, reminding me of what You take, (any of you!) when given the chance.

So I promise you, my dear genie of creativity, my muse, my God, and ALL of you;
I will be here to write, every single day, for a rendez-vous of sixty minutes.
And we will still have a good time, and we’re going to conquer the world, but from now on we also have an understanding here;

Let’s keep this civil.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

Postscript October 25, 2020

I just updated this post, 2,5 years later.
And I’m both amazed and shocked; Things have not changed one bit!
Writing still is this all-consuming force in my life that devours me.
And I secretly still wish I would have something that starts with a B and ends with “alance”.
And create something that starts with a B, and ends with “ooks”.
And I will.
Because the number 2020 is so cool! I want my books to be published this year, and it will be done.

“Getergd door een rits onduidelijke medische klachten, besluit Lauren geen suiker meer te eten, geen Chardonnay meer te nemen, en geen latte macchiato’s meer te drinken.

Na een paar weken is ze zo apathisch dat ze zelfs vergeet te masturberen.

Ineens weet Lauren nog steeds niet waar het naartoe moet met haar leven, maar ze is wel klaarwakker. Zeker als ze erachter komt, dat Sam binnen een week een optreden geeft bij haar om de hoek.

Sam doet haar denken aan een verboden relatie met haar leerling, iets waar ze gemengde gevoelens over heeft.
Sam wil die best met haar onderzoeken, maar hij vraag een prijs…”

Het boek De Candystop is hier te koop