Category: Dear Sara

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

I remember marble tracks as being  a simple wooden toy, where you drop the marble on the top track, and watch it rolling down over de diagonal slide to the right, drop to the next tier, and so on.
Until it comes out at the bottom , over a melodious staircase that makes music from the marble running over it.

But I just Googled these marble tracks, and they have gone totally next level!

No longer a uniform toy, the tracks are now built similarly to Lego. And there are boxes with sets for tracks ranging from globe-like spheres to colorful tracks connecting multiple tower constructions.

So my vision of a marble track symbolizing my love life, but one with gates that lock or open between different layers, is actually less fictional now than it was based on the toy from my youth.
That’s what I’ve been up to!
I have translated lessons from my love life, into a system. And it is giving me wings in every other area as well. Because you could build a track for each and everyone of them.

The idea is that the tracks, not you, select potential suitors.
And to not get emotionally invested until a marble falls through, into your bed in this case.

In a way, I’ve always had a marble track in place, but it was broader than what I’m aiming for now.
But it did work.
For instance, I have never encountered bad lovers, EVER. Our arrangements have been flawed in more ways than I can count, and I have worked around tough character traits  (both theirs and mine!!) at a level I would never have managed if sex had not been the reward.
But I never had someone in my bed who was not a wonderful lover.

As sort of a mid-text PS: I do want to add that I need to be madly in love with a man, right? I mean, you could argue that the track is nothing more than me learning not to engage with people I am not madly in love with.
That I take myself through that track time and time again, knocking into gates that stay closed because I know damn well I m not in love.

But for this blogpost, I’m going to leave that part out, because it’s just not very interesting. And frankly, it’s also not what has given me this feeling of “Cool I hacked this!”
You don’t think “Cool! I hacked this!” when you decide not to engage unless deeply in love. That is not actionable enough.

But back to this marble track, which has always been there.
But now, in the 2.0 2.6 version, I no longer feel responsible for who wants to go into the maze, nor for what they encounter there.
In particular not what they encounter inside themselves. I no longer perform emotional labor and consider it part of a broader feminist package against patriarchy.

And next to me not smoothing out any hurdles, the tracks are also about things I need to have an amazing experience.
Things like: Effort, initiative, holding space for me, attunement, and focus. It is tempting to add “clear communication”, but I really should not because I like the mystery of things being done without words.

The marble track should run in a way that it blocks anyone who will not be able to meet my new standards. 
For both our safety, really. But mostly, for my mental peace and quiet. 

The marble track has been working like a charm. And yes, it is keeping everyone out, which does not sound like much of a result.
But it is preventing me from performing emotional labor. Something I admit still having been caught up in, as recently as last year.

Meanwhile, I’ve made several attempts estimating which men from my past would have been in my life, if my boundaries had always been this strong, my standards this high.
I’ve identified four!

Two lovers would have been in my life, in much the same way as they have been. One from when I was very young, and my last lover as well. So the first and the last, really. Unchanged. If I had to psychologize it I would say those connections were so destined, they would not have been changed by any circumstance. Much less by me applying the principles of a kid’s toy.

With the majority of the men who have been in my life, there is of course really no telling if we would have done better, if I had had better standards. For many men it would have offered a challenge they’d have loved to live up to.
I can look back and think they would not have passed, but the truth is I have no idea how they would have responded. Many of them may have upped their game and could still have been in my life. And bed.

But the most interesting reflections were the ones immediately offering an entirely different picture!
A better one.
And although I said I would leave that aspect out – Yes, these were in fact men I was deeply in love with.

One was someone who broke up with me, in an incredibly messy and fucked up way. And yet I can now see that if he had had to work for my attention, he would have fought for me like a lion.
In hindsight I think he was someone who operated on the IKEA principle: The more effort he would have to put in to get it all up and running, the more attached he would be.
Had I not been the one working my ass off, he would have, and our relationship would have been entirely different.

And the final man with whom I know things would have been so much better, was someone with whom I was very much in love, but I rejected him because I was already involved. And also because my feelings for him scared me. He did not offer any stability or safety for me to hold on to.
And yet?
His energy was so clear, the connection so real;
He offered me the purest relationship gold but from a planet I had never been to. I did not recognize it.

Maybe me being so enthusiastic about the marble track never had anything to do with keeping the men out that were not putting in the work.

Maybe the reason I am so incredibly happy with this find is that I know the track will let the right one through.
Immediately.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

In November I wrote you a post called Becoming Lauren, which was about centering the softer, former-lover part of me.
Lauren is the name I created for myself almost two decades ago, when I started my quest to develop my love life, and in tandem with that, became a writer.

I never set out to become a writer yet it became clear from the get go I would never be able to step on the journey, let alone complete it, without becoming a writer.
Every quest requires transformation, and self-reflection is by far the most thorough as well as most autonomous way to do that. Had I not become a writer, I would have top-heavy burdened my friendships.

But now that it’s all in the past, every element surrounding Lauren Harteveld requires a review.

Do I still need that amount of reflection, now that I no longer have a sex life?
And I know for an absolute fact I will never let things get that complicated again.
But how can I keep what the past two decades brought me?

November’s post was an attempt to outline all the good Lauren brought me, and how I would want to, and need to, start designing my life more consciously in order to honor “her”, and not be burdened by work.

Little by little, and definitely with a generous amount of trial and error, the past six weeks have been about acting accordingly.
About giving “Lauren”, the soft sensual writer side of me who as a rule wants nothing to do with the outside world unless it’s really really good and sweet;
About giving her more space.

But what it made clear is that contrary to what I thought, the person I need to be focusing on in order to reach this space and atmosphere where Lauren can thrive is not Lauren;
It is her bodyguard.

It’s like that quote you often give me on creating Art being about creating the space where Art become inevitable.
I “only” need to create the space where Lauren becomes inevitable.
The space/ the life, where “of course” my inner-Lauren would want to be!

I need to be her body guard, protector, guardian angel, beneficiary, Landlady, Housekeeping and accountant so that she can do the only thing she wants to do:
Enjoy life in all its softness and sweetness.

Since my final letter to you I have been coming to terms with that, and that therefor the focus is not on Lauren.
It’s on giving Bodyguard-me full authority to keep people out, to set boundaries, control access, check identities, run background checks and to never let anyone interfere with Lauren before full clearance.

Even past interactions are no guarantee you will immediately be granted access;
The situation we are in, will be vetted every single time.
Access All Areas-passes will expire immediately after the event.

Now that I know this, which is only a recent insight, life has become incredibly simple, because for starters, the bodyguard only works 40h/week.
Any interaction needs to be within that time, because without her bodyguard Lauren does not even pick up her phone.

The only productive or worldly thing Lauren does, is writing. First thing AM, in her bathing robe, and letting it lavishly flow into her day, taking as many hours as she needs.

And her bodyguard still fast asleep.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

The good news is that my work under my real name, is taking shape.
And I love it so much.
The past couple of months I have streamlined my content planning, my wardrobe, my personas, and life has been throwing me boons instead of curveballs.
The right people are crossing my path, I’ve been incredibly lucky.

And yet….
Yet something is seriously off.
And because everything professional is better than it has ever been, I know the problem is not there. It is within. 
I’m losing my real myself, Lauren the writer.

It has been a blessing that, because I have been a writer under this alter ego for such a long time, I found who I truly was many years ago.
It made my “real life” easier. Because underneath I knew who I was, even though most people didn’t see me that way, and didn’t know I was a diary writer.

And I expected that once my career in this real world was just as well-thought through and fitted me the same way writing as Lauren Harteveld fitted me –
My life would feel even better.
That now, everything was aligned and as it should be.
Except apparently, it isn’t.

It feels like a brick has come loose in the road. Or an iron lit covering a manhole has shifted.
That something that used to be fixed, even when the rest was falling to pieces, has come loose.
And it won’t go away by basking in my newfound happiness in the workfield.
This, is deeper.

And I think it’s “Lauren”, this writer persona that is also my truest self.
The person I chose to become two decades ago, when I was solid in my work, and was willing to pick up some personal projects such as being single.
Which I had never tried.

I thought I’d do some stupid things, regret most of it, and probably even regretting breaking free like that and be lonely when I know I could have stayed with my boyfriend.
I was so willing to be disappointed.
But I wasn’t.

I loved being single, and it also made me a writer.
And I became Lauren.

But now with the rest of my life firing on all cylinders, I feel she’s slipping away…

I need to make her a priority once again.
Because I’m nowhere without her.

I have become her.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

It seemed like such a good idea:
To center my whole life around my relationships.
Professional relationships, friends, family, lovers, all, relationships.

If I had learned anything, and I certainly hoped so because it was one of the few things that kept me afloat these recent years, then it was that relationships require at least the same amount of planning, resources, and strategy, than “all” other areas of life.

“All” between quotation marks because there’s actually not that many areas.
In Africa they talk about “The Big Five” referring to the biggest animals, but I think humans have got less areas they actually focus on.
I’d say three for some, two for most.
And relationships, outside of romance or the nuclear family, is not one of them.

I had realized that my happiness throughout my life had been heavily dependent on at least one main social structure, and usually more, being presented to me on a silver platter…..
School, university, work;
There was nothing I needed to do, I could just hop on the wagon and off I went.
I never had problems socializing.

Looking back however, I can see the High Risk episodes in my life.
Time periods to a maximum of 6, 9 months maybe, where one social structure had ended and another one had not quite begun, and loneliness started creeping in.
So yes, I could have picked up this lesson sooner, that I was dependent on these structures.
But I didn’t.
Not until it came all crashing down in what was a perfect storm, that has been going on to this day.
Yet, I feel it is clearing up slowly, it’s definitely less dense. And either way, it is time to extract its lessons!
And since I’m probably still not done paying the price, I intend to find each and every one of them and get my years-long investment back.
I want to uncover every lesson that’s in there.

For what was probably just hours but it seemed like a lifetime, I believed one conclusion of this Storm Era, was I would be centering my life around my relationships.
This even tied into what an astrologer had told me, that my relationships were my wealth.
In the unlikely case this storm would ever fully clear up, I did not want this long Fall Out to happen again. And it didn’t have to, because this time I knew what to focus on. And more importantly, what NOT to focus on;
Writing.

My writing has damaged relationships, not facilitated them. And this came on top of writing itself being an isolating activity. A joyful, feeling-on-purpose and in-flow activity;
But technically isolating, none the less.
Just like fasting: Many people believe fasting to be healthy, but we’re all aware it should be done in moderation or you die.
Writing works the same way.

In my experience, creativity as a whole is a demanding lover, where you’re constantly wondering if this is one of those unhealthy relationships;
Or if it’s The Love of The Century.

I’ve been writing since 2006, yet never without questioning its true character. To have it pop up again as something that had eroded my social life, was kind of like the final drop in a bucket that had been overflowing for years.
It was time to close the tap.

My social life would become my number one priority.

But within hours, I course corrected.
I made a diary entry and photo copied it 4 times and pasted it into all the other notebooks of relevance.

If my diaries are ever studied and my life reconstructed, the curator will call it the diary entry of October 14, 2025, where you can see the writer accepts who she is.
“See, she copied and pasted it into all her running diaries at the time. It was clearly an important decision for her.”
And it clearly was.

So what have I decided?
Now that I have obviously accepted my fate that, just like all the other people, I do not center my life around my relationships.
And I don’t have a partner nor a nuclear family to take care of, so my number of things to focus on is even one less than for everybody with children, or a partner, and far less than anybody going on safari hoping to catch a glimpse of wildlife.

Which is that I will focus exclusively on my professional life.
Or lives.

From Monday to Friday, I work under my other, “real” name, including on all the content I create there. 
And on Friday evening I switch to weekend mode, which is for this account, for Lauren Harteveld.

Social appointments during the week will cannibalize be deducted from my creative hours, aka content hours.
And social appointments in the weekend will be very welcome because that’s what weekends are for.
And on weekends I will also write one small blogpost for Lauren Harteveld (this blog).

Should I have more time I will publish my book(s), but I’ve fallen off the wagon there so dramatically, I don’t even remember how to get up.
And either way, that’s not the most important aspect of this split.

The most important thing is that the author has accepted her fate as a writer and has effectively resisted the temptation to center her life around her relationships.

And here the middle-aged generation gamma curator pushes her glasses up her nose, and stares intensely at the small group of people taking the guided tour of the Harteveld Estate.

“This letter, which she pasted in all her diaries, is why we believe the 14th of October 2025 was one of the most important dates of the author’s life,”
The tour guide will say.
“She finally understood who she was, and what she had to do.”

And that it was indeed;
The Love of the Century.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.Dear Sara,

I think I just had the worst week of the year, but I could be wrong.
Maybe wounds that have only just healed feel just more tender than the rest of the scars.

But omg what a result I have to share with you!
What an amazing and most-welcome breakthrough, that will last me for decades if not the rest of my life.
‘Cause I finally nailed it, this thing called Life.
Turns out I have some sensitivities I need to work around if I don’t want to end up in total meltdown.

If I don’t up my game plan, and keep being caught off-guard by betrayal, emotional hijacks and just the general rub-off of stress from other people onto me;
Well, then I’m not going to make it.
Simple as that.

Unless I hack this, I will not recover to my pre-pandemic self.

Plus I have an agenda. And what this agenda needs more than anything, is a fucking robust foundation that cannot just stand the storm;
It needs to be, the fucking storm.
But let me start at the beginning.

Like I said there was a meltdown.
A complete fallout of everything, after a week where according to extrovert/ normal people standards, nothing actually happened.

I often tell you how I feel I go through so many cool adventures, and when somebody asks me how I’ve been I want to start telling.
Until I realize it’s all internal.
From the outside, nothing noteworthy happened.

The same thing goes for bad weeks too.
I couldn’t tell you what happened, because it was absolutely nothing outside of the ordinary.
And yet?
It killed me…. it really did.

Ended up having to spend a whole day in bed, only waking up to get more painkillers and a bucket because I thought I was going to throw up.
At 8.30 PM I was healed, like always I could not believe it. Although I know these episodes, I’ve been having them since 2020.
I believe the accurate label would be migraine and thank god they’ve become very rare.
But not rare enough, obviously.

Anyway, I made myself a breakfast, that was actually my dinner but I didn’t dare having any of my regular past 10 AM foods yet. But all was well.
When I went to sleep again, just a few hours later, I had a full night’s sleep yet again. Still exhausted apparently, by what had happened.
So I’m good now.

Good, but clearly this past week needs to be dissected to the t, in order to find the ingredients that drive me into a meltdown. I simply cannot afford to have this happening again.
Where did I go wrong?

And after a day of puzzling (seems wonderfully symmetrical! A day in bed counterbalanced by a day of creative puzzling on my identities) I came up with a chart.

The three layers are:
outer layer (black): Artist/ Rock Star
second layer (pink): Mad chaotic person (The MCP!)
third layer and core: Lauren 2000 (light blue) and Lauren 1990 (eggshell)
Lauren (the deepest layers) is a friend (or a lover, hopefully one day again) living in the year 2000 or even 1990.
Lauren 2000/ 1990 lives offline and it is a timeline travel project, my experimental art form.

I will now tell more about each layer, and how this new setup will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns.

first layer: Artist/ Rock Star
This is where I create ALL my things.
I could even start using it for publishing my books, which is the hot potato in my schedule that never actually gets done because it does not feel important enough, and it’s also boring.
But Artist layer does not mind boring, because
-> they don’t have to interact with anybody <-
Like a true Rock Star, they’re completely inaccessible and they only show up if you pay them to do so. 
A lot, if you pay them a lot. And for a beforehand agreed upon time bracket, only.
However, the negotiations for this are not handled by the Rock Star themselves, but by the agent.
A.k.a. mad chaotic person, an entirely new layer built upon the smoldering ashes of the meltdown.

How the Artist/ Rock Star layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

The Artist/Rock Star-me creates within the safety of my own home. The production schedule follows a predictable pattern of what needs to be done and when.
And by taking all social responsibilities off their plate, they are given full creative freedom and are shielded from disruptions.

second layer: Mad Chaotic Person (The MCP!)

Responsible for (almost) all social interaction, including posting content the artist/ Rock Star has made.
The only exceptions are people who relate to the deepest core layer, of Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990, who obviously communicate with her.
But even there….. falling back onto the Mad Chaotic Person, could be welcome every now and then!

So how did this MCP (Mad Chaotic Person) come into being?

It all started when I realized my view on what it means to be human had shifted.
You see, through a combination of factors among which (yes) privilege but also courage to make incredibly bold choices, I can look back at life and say I always took the right turn.

Sometimes things did not turn out the way I thought they would. But that was because I did not have the right knowledge, sometimes society at large didn’t even have the whole picture yet.
So although I will never stop being bummed out by what all that, cumulatively,  cost me *insert curse*, it simply is what it is.
When you know better you do better.

But at large, yes, I can look back and say I made some damn smart moves when it came to relationships, sex and even career and finances.
And I definitely managed to miraculously avoid the trap society has set up for us, where women end up attending to everybody’s needs but their own.  

However, from the green pastures of having escaped that trap I can tell you this:
If you’re not bound by shared resources, consider yourself an outcast.

Although it was no doubt a gradual realization, as one by one my relationships fell out or altered in a way that their conditionality and fragility had come drifting to the surface, this does feel uniquely like a 2025-breakthrough.
The realization that nothing binds us, but pain.
(the pain of shared “resources”)

In other words, by now I believe connection is “nothing more” but someone you share your pain with. Not pain, which you can then share (as in cut in half). No, I mean that the connection itself is established THROUGH the shared resources, which can be validation or other intangible payoffs, which then cause pain.
It is the pain itself, that makes it a relationship.

Now this may just be an individual experience, I fervently hope it is!
I really hope that to other people, relationships or even casual human interaction does not feel like someone scraping a blunt potato peeler over your skin.

If I look back at the past year – where I have actively been aligning my relationships to a higher form of communication and I’d say with some very impressive results! – I thought what I was doing was outcome focused, Sara.
So I thought (in my ignorance, obviously) I was redesigning my friendships, and really all relationships, so the outcome would be higher.
For almost 14 months, I have believed that.

Now I see that the quality of those relationships did not improve because I boosted the outcome, the results, no;
They improved, because I removed the pain!

The pain of bickering over resources, like if we were going to see each other, and so on.

It has only been possible to see me if you took full responsibility, were present, chose me, us, our time together.
I have demanded dates to come fully funded, and fully resourced in every way imaginable.

And these dates will still go on, in the core two layers of Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990- but it is not having a Plan B for when these conditions are not met- that caused the meltdowns!

I lost a whole week because I was showing up for people like that pure Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990 core, or in a half-assed dangerously accessible version of that Rock Star outer layer, in situations that neither met high-paid professionalism of the Rock Star, nor the New Dating Protocol of Lauren 1990 or 2000.

In other words, I gave my best self, in situations that were cut out for normal resources-based pain and chaos relationships!
I showed up as caviar when they craved a proper meal.

Proper meals, Sara! 
I need to BE a proper meal!
Someone people can relate to, be human around, feel SEEN and about a thousand more things that are still largely foreign to me.

What I realized after last week’s debacle was that I need my default to be messy chaos, because what I meet 99% of the time is messy chaos. 
So although I think the work I put into my friendships was really useful, they are not a prelude to what will help me through the rest of my life.
Instead of a default, or a standard or aspirational level, my friendships are in fact more like an oasis to the desert;
A rare exception.

And my meltdowns stem from taking on the desert like an oasis, with a thirsty delicate core, that is absolutely not built for hardship. Only for clear bodies of water, luscious vegetation and drinking milk straight from the coconut.

And it’s not even a service to my friends to only and automatically show up that vulnerable (in bikini!).
Maybe they first need to vent about the world being filled with cacti, or are otherwise in a bad mood or whatever.
I owe it to them that I can take that on, and to not show up attuned to the most ethereal layers of existence.
I’ve been cornering them, even they need me to show up more robust.

Mad Chaotic Person will be my new persona that handles all social media as well as real-life interactions, including first-contact with the ones meeting to Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990.

And not only will Mad Chaotic Person be built not to give a flying fuck about how reckless, inauthentic and sloppy other people are in interacting with her;
She’ll also be equipped with all my unprocessed emotions, my grudges, my unfiltered aggression, and of course my madness and my chaos.
She will be the embodiment of the ultimate human experience.

Which, according to my mathematical calculations that equate relationships to pain, will make her incredible popular and adaptable in every and all relationships!
Wasn’t it in Alice in Wonderland, where someone (probably the Mad Hatter) says “We’re all mad down here.”? 

(In hindsight) I believe my recent years of trying to regulate my relationships, by trying to be honest and clean, have alienated me, and have taken away my ability for true human connection.
But this Mad Chaotic Person looks forward to embracing the blunt potato peeler and unprecedented levels of impurity.
And to be a proper meal (and not a dish of caviar), when meeting the hungry.

How the Mad Chaotic Person (MCP) layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

Simple!
By putting her in charge of all interaction, I have both a place to emotionally dump all my unprocessed shit (Oh, I’m sorry, did I say that out loud?) but also a tornado layer of forcefully moving energy that can pick up anything big and small, only to spit it out and be done with it two miles and five minutes later.
I will be incapable of holding on to anything, including any memory of what happened.
Mad Chaotic Person will help me show up like a force of nature, instead of like a delicate snowflake that melts at the first sign of heat.

third layer: Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990

Oh Sweetie!
Oh Lovergirl, Babygirl, the hell we have been through.

At the risk of sounding even more over the top dramatic, but I really can’t believe I never got the memo that showing up authentically will not just make human interaction practically impossible;
It will also make it unnecessary painful.
And I mean more than just all of your expectations not being met and you first being energetically drained and then discarded;
I mean at the most existential level, being rejected as a human being.

The biggest change in who I am has been in recent years and it has resulted in not feeling connected to anyone anymore. Not in that automatic, unconditional, way. There is no belonging.
And this process has been symbiotic with living more from my truest self. So much so, that I can’t even say which caused what.
Did I start living my authentic self, and then stopped connecting?
Or were the connections severed and did this disconnection allow me to become my truest self? 

I cannot blame other people, because I’ve been trapped in a web of micro-deviations from being my real self, for decades…
So of course everybody around me was used to that. 
But still; it hurt.

It hurts finding your true authentic self, to then realize that only a handful of people like her. But that should never be a reason to not honor her, and to be happy you found her.
That person is Lauren 2000 or Lauren 1990.
So they’re versions of me, living in different timelines.
Lauren 1990 is new, but Lauren 2000 has been on this timeline since 1994 (our 2019).
She (Lauren 2000) is the one who decided to go back, and start her life again in 1990.
I don’t know yet how this will all go, artistically or otherwise, we’ll see.

Anyway, what is obvious is that all my friendships and future love relationships are under the identity of Lauren/ the 1990 and 2000 timeline. My authentic self came at a price for sure, but also with an incredible payoff!
I can now have relationships as my true self.
For the real inner-circle, I no longer hide.

How the Lauren 2000 and Lauren 1990 layer will help me navigate, so I can avoid losing more days to meltdowns:

This is where all the hard work is stored, of finding my way back to who I truly was, and now am again. Decades of being led astray, undone. This persona is home, it is not even a persona. It is who I am, even though I understand this time travel aspect is weird and unusual. But I like it.

The hours or even moments I can “be” her, are the icing on the cake, the cherry on top, the reason for everything else.

She is the reason I want to live.

Happily, ever after.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

It has been, like the song goes, “raining men” ever since our last call.
And I am so terribly grateful for all of these experiences, after the slow breakup of a relationship that lasted a decade yet that never truly happened.
Neither the relationship, nor the breakup.
They were both soft, indirect and played out like chess.

The past few weeks saved me, from that silent and lonely post-breakup period.
Eighteen months where I designed the blueprint to my new love life, in which I wanted three lovers. But also the time I wondered;
“Who am I kidding, I don’t even have one!”

That time, has ended.
The pieces are moving.

Someone I had a click with turned out to be far more available than I could know;
I also met someone new;
And the only two men I ever fell in love with through correspondence both wrote me for the first time since 2024.

Yet at the same time I find myself being drawn to only one man, another one.
I’m absolutely mesmerized by him and today I realize that (t)his story needs to unfold first, so that if I indeed ever have three lovers, it will be after understanding him. What it is about him, that is so captivating to me.

What is it, that I am lacking, denying myself or not owning, that it has created a hole the size of a grown man?
But there is more. (much more!)

Because I feel that the lesson he holds for me, is something so abstract that I can “harvest it”, without us ever being involved in any way.
So although of course I hope he’s falling head over heels in love with me too, and we start this beautiful gorgeous affair with all the bells and whistles;
That I, and in all probability he as well, no longer need that.

I feel he is emitting a frequency or a message, a teaching – and I know this sounds both ridiculous as well as invasive in all sorts of ways so please forgive me for that! – that anyone (not just me!) who is around him can pick it up.

And if that is true then the fact that I think, and feel, that I am madly in love with him, may actually be a very simplistic and limited label.
To try to make sense of something that I have never encountered before.

Before I move on to becoming a lover again, whether from him or any other man, I need to figure out what this is.
What it is about him, that has me spellbound.
It feels like a clue to a part of myself I don’t have access to.

Then, to complicate matters even further, I find myself fantasizing;
“Okay but what if this does turn into an affair and he breaks your heart, which we know he will, then what?!”
And another layer of mystery and spirituality unravels.
Because how cool would it be, to counter, oppose, heal, the damage of the violent heartbreak at 16 and at 36, if this time, I undergo it willingly.
Like a test if I learned anything, if I can find my ground, keep having faith in myself and if I can be with the overwhelming pain and loss, one more time?!
I mean wow…. that is some challenge.
To experience it again, but consciously this time.

And I have an ulterior motive to wish for such a heartbreak;
A desire to have my heart cracked open.

The past decade with my lover, the affair, and then all the other factors that caused layer after layer of hardening-
It needs to be undone.

As much as I enjoy being in complete control of my emotional life-
It needs to end.
I need to start feeling again, and for so many many reasons.

I feel his presence, his breakup or even his simple rejection, could do that trick. It might even explain my fascination for him, the spell;
He is the only who could still break my heart, despite its hardening.

I have so many thoughts about him, I can hardly keep up!
And about concepts that are entirely foreign to me. And from angles I have never used, it’s all so new!
It’s like a book opens to a whole new world, I did not know existed.

Or, or, or, it’s none of that.
Because I once told you I am a monogamist. But I never told you what that means. 
It means my default mode is always, and has always been, to have only one lover, one boyfriend, or one partner, so it was indiscriminately of my status in their lives.
Because the man I was in love with, always had the same status in mine.
He was The One.

This whole letter could be nothing more than me realizing I am monogamous.

And that my heart has already chosen.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

It all started with the serial realization that I want three lovers.

Not one consistent thought, but serial, because it is something I have been claiming on and off for over a year yet I kept backing off, thinking things would get too complicated even just agenda-wise.
But after not having thought about it for months, suddenly the desire surfaced again, and on a moment I could use a good story to give the conversation a little extra, so I told it to someone else.

But in the days that followed I discovered it was more than good entertainment. The desire didn’t fade and it didn’t get crushed under anticipated practicalities. In fact it got brighter and gained definition.
From a concept, it grew into a 3D project that I could spin around in my mind, viewing it from all angles.
And threading it through my years, months, and weeks.

Weaving my life around these three lovers created a symphony of performance art, where I was in every play, but every time with a different co-creator.
Who, maybe, was doing the same thing, but with other women.
And I was a co-creator in his symphony too.

I saw a future where the past encounters with my former lover Mr.Big, had been lifted out of the eight years we saw each other, cleared of their content, and the empty shells, the dating capsules, were now rearranged as building blocks of a new and far more sophisticated “art form”;
A string of dates weaving three lovers and me together.

The quotation marks around art form stand for the fact that since these dates do not have an audience, according to some definitions, they are not art.

In their new format, these encounters were no longer staged around secrecy because we were having a secret affair;
Now the cadence of recurring events in exclusive pockets of time, vacuum without interaction with real life, would become its own universe in which three intimate relationships could co-exist.

This realization in itself, was huge.
What I had truly desired all along, and every time I had jokingly or casually brought up the subject of wanting multiple lovers, was to be the one who HELD these three affairs.
Who UNDERSTOOD and ORCHESTRATED them.
Who MASTERED them.

I wanted these encounters to sing, to vibrate, to blossom, and yes also have no holds barred, intense, irresponsibly hot sex.
But there was definitely a hell of a lot more to it than just “I want three lovers”.

Although sure, if I was looking for a cool conversational topic, it could always be rounded off to that. 

After I had established this three-lover thing was indeed a genuine artistic and creative desire – and would probably become my best work, a spot now reserved for the 8 year long affair with Mr. Big – the idea started expanding in three (!) different ways.

First of all, I started realizing that if my longing was in fact to be the holder of this art project, more than it was to experience its contents (the dates co-created with my three lovers), then I could and should, start right now!
So I will be blocking my calendar for days when I am offline, and could have a date with a lover.
This time will already be dedicated to them.
And if I do not have a date, I will choose an alternative, which is largely to be decided. But the general concept is that the day should then be dedicated to something that comes the closest to a date with someone you are in love with.

So the first epiphany was that this art project is starting now, because it is about becoming the lover, and not about finding new lovers.

The second way things started expanding was that I realized this was not exclusive to my love life;
This covered EVERYTHING!
In all areas of life, things feel stagnant until I translate it to BECOMING.
I want to be the person who can hold (space for) the job, the rock star clients, the millions in my bankaccount, the penthouse overlooking the city.
In other words?
It ALL starts NOW!
Because all I was ever interested in, was in being the person who’d be able to handle that. With grace.

And the third way things started expanding, or perhaps rooting is a better verb, was that I gained a deeper understanding of WHY I was so drawn to wanting to be able to hold these big and complicated relationships, and to take on these challenging responsibilities;
Because it would force me to root deeply into myself.

The emotional storms, the unpredictability of relationships, the heaviness of the demands of the world;
It can only be withstood by someone who is grounded into something deeper.
Or connected to something higher.
Either way, it is the territory of humans who have found their anchor in something beyond the physical plane of existence.

And this can be rooted in values, an alignment with purpose, a base in religion, or the execution of a mission.
But the only way to receive big material success and other abundance, and be able to hold it with grace, is to know where they fit into your bigger picture.
To be the creator and the holder of that bigger picture, instead of being overpowered by its different elements.

All in all, the juice story that I was looking for three lovers is unravelling into a longread greatly extending modern day attention spans.
But it is, to me, also pointing to what should be the focus of my attention, the pillar that is going to do all the holding, lifting and creating of these new experiences;
My body.

And I honestly have no idea how, because I have been a writer for 20 years and where I started ripped and lean, over time the writing intensified and with every year I was less in my body.

In theory I know how to reverse it; Less or no writing, and prioritizing yoga and cycling or walking instead.
But in practice?
How do I switch from having been a writer for almost two decades, to training my body like a performer?
And in the year 2025, when I already have to cut deeper and deeper into my writing because of other obligations?

It feels so brutal to start prioritizing taking care of my physique, and to not write, including to not post. Because posting has been the reward for writing.
Posting content has become the fix I learned to crave.

I know, in theory, that so many people take excellent care of their health, working far more hours than me.
But to me it feels unfathomable to pull back from being visible online, and seeing myself as a writer or a content creator (since I m already shifting to videos).
But there is a catch, or a loophole:
For the past five years the majority of my work has been under my own name, and not under Lauren Harteveld, the alterego I started about two decades ago.
And I am okay with that;
Although I consider this/ Lauren’s work my best, it was tied to my first surge in my love life. The transition from being in longterm relationships, to discovering myself as a single (and ultimately landing on the identity of the mistress)

But times have changed and even IF my sexlife picked up, I would no longer publish or use those stories online, in a blogpost.
I created a post about the terms of agreement, that I would run by a new lover. Consent has become more important, and the stories will only be published in book-form with a minimum of two years in between the date when it happened, and the publishing.

So Lauren Harteveld, the diarist, basically already quit what was once her best online work anyway.
Because the storyline stopped (relationship with Mr.Big ended) but also because the online world has become much more transparant.
A blog is no longer a place of mystery.
So “she” no longer fancies blogging about her love life, and I have long been contemplating ways to keep her in the creative loop, but she’s just not interested.

I jokingly say to people that although I AM Lauren Harteveld – meaning that is how I feel when no one is watching, it’s what feels like truly, deeply, me- the truth is, she would not show up in any of the normal-life situations.
“She only lies in bed eating grapes, waiting until the sex begins again,” I explain.

So bringing it all together, wrapping it up, the picture is quite clear actually!
Just like Lauren Harteveld the writer, was “born” two decades ago
– when I entered a new phase in my love life and the first thing this shift accomplished was inspiring me to start writing-
In the same way, in 2025, I will let my path of becoming this deeply rooted Lover of 3 dictate the artform that goes along with it.
Or no art form at all.

All I knew, all those years ago, was that I wanted to fall in love, have many first kisses, many first times, with new men.
And I understood this meant I was not going to accept regular relationships but instead would explore and experience what it was like to BE a single woman.
Turned out, this included writing, but it was in a time I was a fulltime yoga teacher.
So you could say the physical part was already taken care of…..

Come 2025, and I know I want a life with three lovers.
And I understand this means I will be exploring and experiencing what it is like to BE someone who can carry that.
I think this will mean I will stop writing and start training my body, and my mind to become stronger and more robust, in order to hold my own weight.
Well, and theirs 😉

And I don’t have the time, but what I do have is one Lauren Harteveld, who has been terribly unmotivated to do much of anything once her sexlife stopped.
And she’s getting tired of eating grapes in bed.

If I get her to take on this project of BECOMING the woman who has three lovers, as well as all the other things;
I think she’ll choose the performative, physical side of it to be the focus of her work. Her body to be the foundation of her new life.
Our, new life.

But regardless what she chooses, I do already know one thing;
Lauren Harteveld, my alterego, will do an amazing job.

She’s got this.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

A few years ago, something happened in my personal life, that changed the course of it.
There are very few people who know about it, and those who do seem to think everything is okay now. And I guess from a worldly perspective it is. It is now better than it has ever been, yes.

But that’s not counting that I am no longer connected to anyone. I’m incapable of human connection, or maybe it’s more that I am now aware that there never was any connection to begin with.
I am alone.

A realization that I have always been alone, yet wasn’t aware of it. Even though I have memories where I was 4 or 5 years old, sitting on the monkey bars with a few other children thinking:
“I do not feel any connection, and am sure they do.”
I was performing connection, and amazed that the other children seemed to have real skin in the game.

And I remember my youth, including puberty, being great. And that makes sense because my heart wasn’t in it.
The only times I “failed” at keeping my cool, was if I was in love, which explains why I have always made my love life a priority. It was the only area of life I truly felt alive. And sex one of the rare moments I felt connected.

But when I was in my late 20s, and after successfully dodging the pitfalls of many social expectations, I unexpectedly got sucked into them. And from an angle I had not seen coming.

Looking back, you could say the event from a few years ago, was the rude awakening I needed.
Now I’m back to where I always was; Alone.

But the process wasn’t easy.
It has taken years to breakup with my former lifestyle, the event was just a tiny part of it. The Great Untangling had actually started years earlier. From the very first signs until today, writing you this letter titled A Dark Chosen One, it was a decade.
A whole decade!
Before everything and everyone not standing in their raw unfiltered Truth,  and able to sit with me (or otherwise engage themselves with me on the monkey bars 😉 ) was gone.
A decade, to clear the jungle gym of my life.

Now don’t worry, I still have people in my life. People I love and respect, and my relationships are better than ever (yes). But I am no longer giving my heart.
It’s just no longer available, which is fine because that’s how it always was.
Just that I forgot. 

I’m not going to burn myself speculating if real relationships and connection do exist for other people, or if they’re just mistaking love for patriarchy and other capitalistic structures that promise a tribal belonging, but are actually just golden cages. Capitalizing on your dream of freedom by having you dig your own financial and legal grave.
But I just made clear what it looks like from where I am standing.

I remember when I told someone I was toying with the thought of connecting more to the spirit world, the realm of the unseen in the broadest sense because it’s totally unknown territory to me, and I feel it has so much potential.
And they replied, understandably, that they always shunned away from that because you have no idea what powers you’re dealing with.

And I thought: “We have no idea what powers capitalism and patriarchy are, yet no one shuns away from getting a mortgage.”
If I was standing in front of two doors and one would lead to shared finances and the other would lead to hell, and would pick hell any day.
Also: way more interesting people there.

So broad strokes you could say that from a very young age, I have felt different. And that all grown up I still have fears that are vastly different to those of other people.
Two more examples:
I remember when the pandemic started and the first two, three weeks, I actually detected a feeling of excitement within myself. Of adventure. Realness!
I really thought that in the face of sickness and death, the mold of decorum and  pleasantries would be broken and real connection would be possible with many people!
Only to conclude even less people were able to have a real conversation.
Second example:
A while ago I coupled the word apocalypse to a topic I thought I had lost interest in. So, for example (this wasn’t the actual thing), “Learn to love even during the apocalypse”. Only to realize much later this wasn’t a revival of this topic of interest;
It was in fact only the apocalypse, I was interested in.

Final example!
I used to live in a house in an area that had already been evacuated because it would be demolished. I absolutely fucking loved it….. The apartment went from great, to unforgettable. All the houses around me were empty. The street was empty and everything was pitch dark.
It even had the superintendent worried, when I had never felt more at home…

And if I envision the rare and unlikely scenario of a natural disaster or a war here where I live;
I already know for an absolute fact I will stay where I live now. Maybe get a dog and a gun for protection, but I will not evacuate, and I will sleep like a baby.
I am fine with death, and I am fine with loneliness.  

And if that ever happens – which of course I hope it doesn’t – then I will have proof for what I am beginning to understand. Which is that this is all connected. 
The isolation.
The loneliness.
The aversion to being swallowed by the system, or by a marriage.
The monkey gym at age 4, knowing I did not belong with the others.

Destiny.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

I have a weak spot for a certain 90s era.
Yet wouldn’t have known about it, if it weren’t for a house in the city where I live, where the interior had been preserved in its pristine 1989 state.

It’s a pattern-rich color pallet with mint, old pink and darker greens as well, and it’s so hard to date because it started in the late 80s but stayed on deep into the 90s.
It was a trend with great longevity,  leaving a mark in both decades. And with people in 2018 looking for dreamhouse apartments for on their vision board. 
I still occasionally encounter passwords of mine that contain its address, although I have grown over the idea of home ownership being a dream-whatever and absolutely love where I live even more now than in 2018.

But that apartment, in its original colors, and a wealthy and generous beneficiary who would buy it for me (better yet: give me a low-rent lease for an indefinite time) could still persuade me to move.
The style has been with me ever since, and it’s my favorite only to be matched by the more neutral 90s (and 50s reminiscent) pallet of beiges and off-white.

So it is perhaps no coincidence that I decided to pick up living in this timeline that I actually already started a couple of times over the past few years.
But I always dropped out because it was overcomplicating things. The only thing more complicated than living in a faux past is living in two of them.

With the addition of the 1990 timeline, which is the follow-up of earlier, and pretty rudimentary, 1988 and 1989 timeline- the ones I dropped out of – I am now living in two reimagined pasts;

1. the year 2000
Background:
Started this in 2019, when I started writing as Lauren1994. We’re six years later so it’s 2000 in her world.

In the year 2000 a 27 year old Lauren is still keeping her diary.
But only on paper, and she/we/I will wait to publish them until two years after it all happened. Or never publish them at all, and let Lauren 2000 be a lived-in timeline, and not a diary-based timeline.
Rule of thumb is that if no sex is happening, I will not bother to publish it.

And speaking of no sex, tadaa!
Here is where the reimagined 1990 timeline comes in.
It’s a spinoff of the earlier story, based on the idea of:
“What would have happened if year 2000 reimagined Lauren, had not chosen her lover Bear in December 1989, but had focused on being her own person?!”

2.the year 1990
Background:
Started this in several iterations (as 1988, 1989), but did not commit to the project until May 2025.

In December 1989, the reimagined Lauren from the 2000 timeline got what would become an eight year long affair with her lover Bear. 
The meat and bones of her diary, which I am currently still publishing at an annoyingly slow pace copy editing, but at least it’s in progess.

The moment she chose for Bear as a 17 year old did not just shape her sexuality, as they would stay lovers for 8 years, but it also made a writer out of her. A diarist.
In 2000 the affair has stranded, as Bear has chosen someone else to build a life with (Lauren and Bear are both in their 20s now) and Bear has moved away and no longer plays a role in her life.

It is here when Lauren2000 thinks:
“Maybe the way to get over this, is to pretend it never happened!”
As she recreates her life.

I think letting this project go through Lauren2000, so through my other reimagined timeline, is what separates it from my earlier attempts.
I can now stay “in character” of Lauren 2000, as I move the timeline even further back to being 17 years old and living in 1990.

And it’s working, Sara! 
And it’s so cool!

I mean, first of all, I m super grateful that all my sexual dreams came true. Similarly to the story of 20th century Lauren I too once took the leap of prioritizing my sex life, and it has brought me more than I could possibly have imagined.
It’s not for the faint at heart, but for those feeling the pull, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Through sexuality you will really discover maybe not the meaning of life, but the meaning of society. You will know of unknown bounds and bonds, of deep fears and of manipulation, you will know treason, unfulfillment and mass hypnosis that are keeping us all nicely walking in line all the way to our coffin.

You could also get the same results being a creative, because creativity activates the right side of your brain and allows you to see through conditioned patterns.
But it’s also what you’ll discover once you start having sex outside of the accepted casual sex or committed relationship dogmas.
Want to make sure no insight is missed, do what I did;
Make your sexual development part of your creative expression.

But I feel I digress.

Anyway, what I meant to say was that both Lauren2000 as well as me, have been defined by a choice for sexual exploration we made a very long time ago.
And we’re both ready to let that go, and the creatively most interesting way to do that is to create a timeline where none of that happened.

Where we were a 17 year old virgin, and although we were very sexual we nevertheless chose to stop pursuing and fly alone. If something happens that’s great, but we’re not going out of our way to meet people nor invest copious amounts of time, emotions etcetera.

We’re going to use the 2025 word/ term “decentering men” here, to describe the road we’re sending this new 1990-version of ourselves on.

And it is so good…. It’s like all my work, everything I found out, it’s all coming together. Because with the sexuality too, I ve always said that you carry that inside of you. The power, the sex, it’s already there. When I was 17 I was not less sexual, just because technically I was a virgin. Having sex cannot make you more sexual, and in the same way not having it (like now, and like Lauren 2000) cannot make it less either.
I’ve always said that.

And now, with this new timeline where I imagine a 1990 timeline, where 6 months ago I gave up my sexual development and made my peace staying a virgin;
I have an opportunity to prove it.

If Lauren 2000’s relationship with Bear did not happen;
If my relationship with my lover did not happen, nor did the 25 years that happened before that;
If my whole history is being wiped clean, right down onto the mint green floral pattern of 1990, then how will I live?

If I take away sex – or at least stop emotionally investing it – the one area of life I fought for the hardest, sacrificed the most, but also achieved more than in any area of my life and which proved to have more for me in store than I ever believed;

Then who am I without it? 

It’s that question, this new 1990 will answer.

 

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

Do you remember when I started identifying with the Will Smith movie I am Legend?
2020
The man alone in a deserted city, devoid of human connection with merely his dog to keep him company.
The same tv show playing over and over.
And zombies to fear on daily expeditions across the overgrown city.

For years, I woke up with the distinct feeling of isolation.
Which turned into waking up sick.
Which eventually led to the point I got sick the moment I lay down.

And although medicine have taken care of my physical symptoms, and the damage these years did to important relationships (the ones that stuck but eroded none the less) is slowly being repaired;
And although I have no doubt the final part of my career will have the same carefree social connection as my entire life was blessed with until 2018-ish (years before the pandemic) when it all started falling apart;
Something has changed.
Something which will never return.
The isolation will stay with me forever, and the only way I will ever be able to belong is through my work.

Because I am no longer connected to others.
It is only through my actions, that I can make the difference now.
And maybe that is what maturity is, and it has opened up new avenues of thinking. It is strange to realize how much of the drama and the despair that I once thought was part of life, I realize now is not mine.
It only seemed mine, because I was connected.

I didn’t really connect the dots until today, when I came across an analysis of Bladerunner 2049, a movie that I have started to feel such a kinship with.
Yet I credited it to Ryan Gosling, or to the Rutger Hauer connection to the 1982 Bladerunner movie.
The magic of art and male beauty. 
Yet didn’t expect my fascination with Bladerunner 2049 to be so personal.

But of course…..

Bladerunner 2049 is about a replicant “named” K who follows his orders to eliminate older model replicants, who still have the ability to disobey.
K hates his job, yet executes without question because his whole life he has been told his feelings do not matter.

This is the point where I had written multiple paragraphs (which I lost when  I lost internet connection), about how we all recognize this as the way we live our lives too.
Execute regardless of how we feel.
Amplified, during the pandemic.
At least in The Netherlands, the discussion about what was “good” and what was “bad” and who were the good people and who could be ignored and marginalized, peaked during these years.
And to me it was not so much the content of the discussion, on either side, as much as it was the total absence of a discussion about the characteristics of the conversation itself, that upset me the most.

And although I still hope to one day get a full insight in what it was exactly that changed me forever during those years, for now I m keeping it at feeling isolated in my need to have a meta conversation about it.

Seeing my position mirrored in Bladerunner 2049, is a first and welcome step.

In the movie a replicant named K, played by Ryan Gosling, hunts other replicants who can still disobey and are therefor terminated.
After every assignment he receives a psychological test with the Nabokov quote above, to ensure he does not start attaching feelings of guilt or remorse to killing is own kind.

On one of his assignments he finds proof of a replicant having had a child, and he has memories that suggest he was that child.
That he is therefor not a replicant, he is not made, but he is born from a special replicant who, much like Mary could conceive Jesus, could get pregnant when law said that should not be possible.

The moment K starts questioning his artificial background is the moment he starts questioning his work and gets a growing sense of meaning and purpose.
Yet despite his possibly divine-like origins, the movie makes it clear that is not what makes him human.
What makes him human are his actions.

Just like the thoughtless, routine-like way in which he did his work (assassinating other replicants) at the beginning of the movie, was what made him a machine, or a non-human.
Not his origin.

Two, three months ago, I was on the verge of starting my own version of  a job where I would assassinate other replicants. 
Like K, I had lost all humanness and had made my peace understanding that to society I was only of use if I did my capitalist duty.

But I had a change of heart.
Just like K, something happened that made me choose to do the right thing.

And not because anyone will notice. Like K, I know neither the resistance, nor capitalism, nor the law, will be able to do what I consider the right thing.
The right thing is always personal. It’s small, insignificant, and impossible to scale up to an organization, religion or philosophy.
Doing the right thing is too subjective to be of any use on a bigger scale.

Because the right thing, is the thing that is done with love, and for love.
And once you see, it becomes the only option.
Yet I am certain that if I were still connected to other people I would not be able to act accordingly.
Because it’s also the most difficult choice.

Despite its fluffy connotation, choosing to act from love is an extremely hard path.

At one point, K asks Anna, who is a creator of memories much like an artist paints a painting, he asks her how you know if a memory is real or not.
At which Anna answers:

“Anything real, should be a mess.”

 

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living