Category: love life

There is a Dutch joke from my childhood, about a hunter who tries to shoot a bear, but misses, and then gets f* in the ass by the bear, as a punishment.
The third time this happens, the bear says:
“You’re not here to hunt.”

And indeed, I am not here to hunt.

2025 has been marked by a tremendous flight in my career. And it has gone from something that just pays for my creative time to something that has purpose and motivates me intrinsically.
I like the work itself, and I also like the bigger vision, the bigger calling behind it.

And yet I have become painfully aware that I am nothing more than the hunter whose thrill is clearly in what happens when he misses the shot.
And not in succeeding at his work.

When I was a teenager I automatically assumed none of us were here to hunt, so to speak.
I mean teens and sexuality; They are almost synonymous. And I couldn’t wait until the sex would begin.

Yet because I found it pretty hard to make those kind of arrangements (fall in love, get some kind of courtship going, and approval of parents so we could use our bedrooms and were not limited to the outdoors) I understood why the majority of our time would be spent on school and not on sex.

It was dependent on too many factors, and as soon as you had everything in place, something would come up, break it all down, and you had to start all over again.

Yet I assumed that IN THEORY, we were all on the same page.
That it was every teen’s number one priority, just that we had different levels of success.

Despite me having a particular hurdle to overcome in getting my sex life up and running, I managed reasonably well. It was not ideal, but considering what I had to work with, or work around, I did a pretty good job.
Although I acknowledged a Me-Rocking-IT-As-A-Single would not be in the cards for me.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that my view of my peers changed.
All of them, without exception, and including the ones who had absolutely crushed it as singles;
They all settled down.

Bye bye exciting sex life.

And that’s when I realized:
I have been the only one, who was never here to hunt.

It’s three decades later and I’m so committed to success, I catch myself taking it seriously.

.
.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

Let’s start with what didn’t get done in 2025.
Me 😉
I did not get done, in the sense that I had a celibate year.
And I’m on a streak, I wouldn’t call it a winning streak, but it is what it is.

What also did not get done;
Getting “over” The Breakup.
Which by now is years ago (questionable, I know, don’t ask)

So this post is definitely not a See-Me-Thrive one!

However, 2025 was such a great year for my heart.
So many men in my heart and mind.
I can’t help feeling grateful for this year, and that I’m back on track.

Even if that track does not seem to lead to being “over” anything, nor to starting all over again and also does not fit into the box of decentering romance and men in my life.
Or it does (I am), but as this post shows, there is still more than enough feelings of intrigue, lust and desire to go around.

Who were they?

I met one man only once, and he did not follow up on an invitation I later sent.
And yet, and yet….. if there was a betting agency I would place mine on that this story is far from over.
We’re bound to run into each other again, for one.
But also, when you know you know.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances:
If there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
Carl Jung

There was chemistry.

Then the second one.
He belonged to 2024, technically speaking, and we never met in real life. Which, to me at least, makes it all the more special because our minds had chemistry.

We did have some conversations this year, but he did not let it come to 2024’s chemistry levels.
Which is fine.
Because I remember it anyway. And it kept at least my heart burning this year!

And then the third, who came out of the blue. He was definitely the Man of the Year, and I would put even more money on us coming back together in some shape or form, in 2026.

It was mind-blowing, yet totally cool.
Nothing happened that could have been picked up by other people, aside from all the women already in love with him, because they would have intuitively sensed it.

But it was silent, it was consistent, and it was all subtext.

It had destiny written all over.

.
.~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

“Why do I throw away memories of something that is so precious to me..

If he decides to stop seeing me, I want to hang on to them, have them in a little box and caress them with my fingertips when he gets married, has his first child, moves to the other side of the country or possibly even migrates, given his work.

I need to build a memory of him, if I can’t build a life.“

from the unpublished manuscript of A Letter From A Stranger, including book 2, Dear Nikki

Over the years, I’ve made multiple attempts to bring these diary entries to print.
Yet, every time I start I can’t understand I dropped it, because the manuscript has been practically ready, the whole time.

I could tell you why technically the approach I had early 2024 and early 2025 turned out to be the wrong one;
Or how I will fix that this time.

But it would be beside the point and also, there is no guarantee my new approach will work.

However, so far I indeed conclude there is absolutely nothing wrong with the manuscript, and that it’s as good as done. As it has been for years.

However, maybe because I started editing from the end working my way backwards (to avoid getting too distracted by the story or chronology, and focus on text alone) I see different things.
And feel a gratitude I did not have before.

The project documents the affair I had, but set in a fictional 90s past.
I call it my first timeline project, and am currently undertaking a new one, living in 1990;
But this post is not about that.
This is about me 2025.
Definitely finding my feet, and having a clearer understanding of how the rest of my life will look, and what place romance will have in it, after it having been the center since 2007.

The affair from the faux 90s diaries has ended, and by now I’m pushing three years of celibacy.
That, is a long time.
In fact, it is so long that it has become its own artefact. My celibacy has unmistakably accumulated value, but I kept longing for what I had.

Until I read that paragraph at the top, and realized it was all perfect as it was. And the manuscript itself is that box of memories I can treasure.

90s Me gave me the treasure box of memories;
So I could always move on.

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

I’m not someone to first do, and then decide based on the experience.
The adage “Just try it and see if you like it.” is not applicable to me at all.First I need the idea of something, play with it, sit with it for a little while, before moving forward.
It needs to grow on me.
And since this post is about sex I think the lover comparison is applicable here:
First, I need to accept the idea.
So this can be the idea of a new man, or of seeing a movie or of anything from moving cities to changing jobs.

The idea is integrated and internalized, before I move forward.
To the extend that if I then meet an experience in the outside world that does not match up to the idea, I reject the experienced.
Not the idea.

This preference for the abstract and the cognitive side of life, expresses in making principle choices first.
And very often, without ever being able to achieve them.

In this way I keep choosing to live without sugar almost daily, but I never keep up with it.
But one day, I will.

However, what has happened before, and what is happening now with the Sexit from the title (Sex + Exit, just like the Brexit was Britain Exit) is reality happening all by itself and then me starting to internalize it into an abstract idea.

So I’m not talking about something quick and superficial like “Just go on that date, maybe you will like him after all!”
or
“Just take that job for now, what’s the worst that could happen, right?”

No, this is the equivalent of when you have been hanging out with someone for months or years, and realize: “I really like them.”

Or you’ve been helping out a friend or family member with their business and realize: “I would love to stay on and work here permanently.”

When the experience starts without any expectations, assuming it’s temporary, and then you think:
“This is actually pretty cool!”

That is what happened with my Sexit.

I’ve been hanging out with myself for years now, and I still love men and am open-minded about what the future could hold.
But there’s no denying that my solitude is becoming more precious to me by the day.

The idea of no longer having sex, has been slowly growing on me.
To the point I can now say:
I love it.
.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

It was a bad year for movies, I can’t even name one. But 2014 was the best year for my career as a yoga teacher as well as my writing. I had never been more confident.

There’s people who say we’re in late-stage capitalism now, in 2025.
I assume meaning the whole thing will be collapsing soon.
Which was true for my yoga career, but not for my writing where my best work was still to come. And not just that: It would be fueled by my love life. As it had always been, ever since I started writing in 2006.

But I did not know any of that, all I knew was that life had never been better than in 2014.

Even my love life had experienced what I assumed was going to be its peak, with someone whom I’d fancied for decades. And I was willing to make work.
Luckily for me, he bailed out. 

By the time November hit I found myself increasingly struggling for what was no longer more than scraps of his attention. That was the moment the man who would become my most important lover, entered my live.

Despite its long duration, what we had would never count as a proper relationship. And yet I find myself falling back on that affair, as proof that my current, now much clearer standards, are not too much to ask.

I even wonder things like:
“If these had been my standards, right from when I was a teen on up;
Would any of the other relationships or flings have happened?!”
My estimate is that one would have happened;
Each and every one of the others, would not;
And one big crush I had said No to because I was not single, would have worked out now. 

All things I am learning analyzing our affair.
The slow process of dissecting what made him the one who gave me exactly what I needed.
Right from our first kiss.

Struggling with 2014’s lover, I swore to never be the first one to kiss again.
And a man dragging it out until the moment of saying our goodbyes was also a No-no. He’d let the clock do his heavy lifting.

But this new man didn’t do any of that.
And he leaned in, sitting next to me. We kissed for one minute, a minute and a half at most.
He complimented me on being a good kisser, and said something about my body which he had touched.

He didn’t make the moment smaller, nor bigger.
Just like our affair, it just was.

Until it wasn’t.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

Just to be clear, this is not a (long?) list of my fetishes. After all, they are explained rather well.
They’re things that turn me on, even when I can’t explain them, have no idea where they originate and I don’t approve of them.
Maybe especially then.
But hot, yeah!

It is not fetishes where life requires explanations. Their purpose is clear, they’re here to enjoy 😉
Providing they’re consensual, legal, etc.
You know the drill.

No, what I discovered was how two areas that are not among those personal kinks (so therefor my interest in them was indeed unexplained) ended up containing vital clues, on how I want to arrange my love life.

My love life needs to be rebuilt from scratch at this point.

And although I am bummed out by the lack of action the past couple of years, I now recognize the dry spells as part of my choice to only have one lover at a time.
It comes at the price of being alone after their departure.
Hence, the dry spell.

But this time around, I’m using the timeout to redesign the whole thing.
I’m mapping out how a new relationship should look.

And it covers both my sexuality, similar to gay men who communicate early on, if they’re top, bottom or versatile.
As well as, which is at least as important, HOW we are going to relate to each other!

How our dates will look, what our communication will look like, etcetera.

And it was mapping out this part, which brought me eye to eye with two of my interests (not fetishes);
– escort work
and
– S&M

Every time I followed up on my interest in them, I saw immediately they were not for me.
Then why did I keep being fascinated by them?
But now I know.

Because they’re both conscious sexual arrangements where two people meet on an agreed upon time to do agreed upon things.
With at least one person in every “pairing”, having put serious thought into concepts like boundaries, safety and consent.
If necessary, they can educate the other person on these.

So I was never fascinated by the sexual aspect of it.
But mesmerized by the mind-boggling amount of ownership, escorting and S&M were proof of.

This transcended sex;
Perhaps even to art.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

No judgement here.
And I wonder if I can even call myself a Monogamist, because I’m not demanding a partner to be faithful to me.
In fact, I’d rather he’s not.

With me committing myself to only having one lover at a time, there will be enough quiet, sweet, nurturing Yin energy to last us a lifetime.
But we’d need someone in charge of adventure, spontaneity, and who fearlessly mingles and who’d rather share themselves a couple of times too often, than once too few.

Even in the most loosely tied arrangement I’ve always turned out to be monogamous. And made an effort to wrap things up before I let someone new come closer.
Including if I didn’t owe either one anything.

My weakest spots, as an accidental monogamist you could say, were returning lovers. An area I will be more strikt in, in the future. 

But all the time, my body was craving monogamy… She had a proven track record of only wanting one lover.
Resisting or responding lukewarm, every time I tried to convince her otherwise.

Things my theoretical 3-lover solution had not taken into account.

So why did I calculate my ideal number of lovers, denying my monogamous nature and trying to make myself into someone I am clearly not?

Because I did not want to keep losing years at the scale it has been costing me.
Throughout my life, I have refused to let heartbreak get me down. Instead, I willingly and intentionally kept the ball rolling.
I refused to let it get to me.

And yet, rolling ball or not (right now I am choosing abstinence), it always costs me a few years of figuring-stuff-out before I fall in love again.

So this year I thought:
“You know what?
I’m gonna set things up for dating multiple men I am in love with!
That way I can skip the limbo years, and don’t lose time when one leaves!”

The math was simple:
Having only one lover had proven to come at tremendous cost.
Two, would spark unhealthy competition.
Three, was clearly the correct number to aim for.

But that was all theory.
And now, after going through the process of reversing my decision and bringing the blueprint back to the drawing board for one very simple sketch!
Oh boy, do I find myself excited!!

The power in choosing one new lover.
In handing over this body and my romantic heart.
Even the risk of painfully lonely years after a breakup.

Sold!

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

There is so much to be grateful for yet my insides are screaming:
“But where do my books go?”
And:
“Where do my lovers go?!”
Followed by a desperate silence to realize there are no books, and there are no lovers. There is only the idea of them.

Residues from the man who left years ago and by the manuscript about our affair.
The only book, I could get myself to work on, as the years disintegrated all who I thought I was (a writer of erotic diaries) and took the only relationship that I was truly emotionally invested in.

When he left it was like the cold came, that gently away took my pain and told me not to worry.
And I didn’t.
But when the spring came, or rather when it should have come, the heart no longer beat.

I feel like a different person, and yet I still write. I still feel like the writer Lauren Harteveld even when the emotional soil it used to root on is no longer there.
Because more than anything, now, I can work.

With his leaving, it was like all emotional bonds were cut, as if it was adamant I’d go without.
Not just romantic bonds but all of them.
I still feel love and affection but I am no longer attached to those emotions. They’re whispers now, not primal screams.

And in the absence of emotions, slowly but steadily, my productivity picked up and it has now reached absolutely insane levels.
One every writer would dream of, but my heart is no longer in it.
And I like it that way.

By now I work 40 hour weeks and none of it is for what used to be my core work of writing diaries or erotica.
You could identify different areas where I am active, but they’re all the same to me because I’m detached to all of them.

I’m not depressed at all, and in many ways I’m feeling better than I ever have in my whole life!
Yet it feels like The Job Of Being Me, instead of being me.

Either way, with that job and my regular social life, I could free up one day a week to live as the person I truly am.

One day, to be with a new lover.
Or one day, for writing about those lovers in my diary.
Or a day to publish that book (1994-1996) and after that 1996-2000. About the man who left.

But it’s or, or, or.
And nothing will happen, until I find a way to defrost this heart. 

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

It took months, before we finally introduced ourselves.

Months, in which I had tried to find out his name through other channels.
Something I was not proud of, but I trusted I would be able to burn off the bad karma before my death.
I would not be guilt tripped into reincarnation, just because I investigated someone’s identity without their consent.

After that had turned up empty, and I had already made my peace I would probably never see him again, or alternatively if I did, he’d avoid me or even be hostile;
That, was the moment we ran into each other.

I simply waved at him, not wanting to force him to talk to me again. Things had not ended well, and I assumed he was in a relationship and had started seeing me as a threat.
And I respected that.

But instead, he took up the invitation and walked towards me, and we had a longer chat than we ever had.

The first shock was that I had totally misjudged his position.
There was nothing fancy about his work, and I wondered;
“But how, Lauren?”
How was I able to be so sure this was someone in a leadership position, when to his own accord, he was not?

I now believe the mistake was because he carries himself as a leader.
Which says little about what career he is in.

Things got even stranger when he told me his real name.
It caused a short circuit in my brain, like I could not understand it. There was no mental drawer to save it.
Another riddle to solve.

This time, I blamed it on the fact that I had already given him a fictional name, which I had internalized completely.
I had been living in another reality and when he told me his real name it was like worlds violently clashing into one another.

His real name was more fitting than the one I gave him.
Mine had been poetic, when this man was as solid as they come.

I had assumed his defining character trait had been that he was able to withstand me.
But I was wrong;
He was able to withstand anything. 

Build to lead and to withstand any storm.

A warrior, who would whisper back:
“I am the storm” 

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*

I used to date a polyamorous man. I was not one of his lovers, but his platonic friend who always asked curious questions on how one managed, what I considered to be, his harem.
A skill mastered by few these days I’d say.

But he was really good at it and seemed to use a classification system based on the types of dates they preferred, or the minimum requirement he could get away with, that helped him to run things smoothly.

I never considered joining the ranks but used the opportunity to study him. And I am now falling back on it to design this new era, in which I desire to have three lovers.

My setup will be tailored to being in love, so I am emotionally polyamorous.

This could also be an email correspondence, Zoom dates, sending letters by carrier pigeons, or a platonic friendship with a man who finds me way too intimidating to have sex with but asks probing questions and maps out what I do in his head, so that he can use it if 15 years from now he wants it for himself.

I got you.

The most important thing I’ve got so far is discretion.

Our friendship should not be a secret but whenever I talk about you as a lover, I will call you by the name your character has in my Lauren year 2000 diary.
Which will not be published until 2 years after, and you will be informed about the diary before you choose to become a lover.

The second element is (of course) impeccable safeR sex.
This topic will be brought up on a very early date, so neither one feels pressured and we can plan for alternatives.

The third element is support on vulnerable moments.
For example a call if you feel insecure about our arrangement.
But my choice will be a check-in the next day. 

If I’m feeling bad, I want him to plan for a slower, easier type of sex next time.

And if I’m in the best of spirits and totally rocking it, I want him to smile and understand he can push me a little bit harder next time.

Or a lot.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Harteveld 2025*
Are 2200 characters, or less.
The name is inspired by the book Fretz 2025 by Johan Fretz and asterisk by the 2025 movie Thunderbolts*