Category: love life

Lovergirl | Harteveld 2025*

Published on by LS Harteveld

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Which will not be published until 2 years after, and you will be informed about the diary before you choose to become a lover.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*

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, the series Harteveld 2025* and the Behind the Scenes of my year 2000 diary.
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The Unmasked (the breakup, chapter 2)

Published on by LS Harteveld

For someone with an insatiable need to dissect all events, facts, thoughts and feelings, and in particular those related to my sex or love life, in order to discover the bigger meaning or logic behind them, I have been exceptionally slow in noticing my life has fallen apart ever since my lover left.
Or to be more accurate, and also make it even more weird this managed to escape my attention:
I failed to notice that I, have fallen apart.

The first month it was still pretty straight forward, because I had demonic nightmares, heart issues, and signs of Bell’s Palsy or another so far still undiagnosed neurological and eye condition.
But after four visits to the GP had landed me on a five month waiting list for a brain scan, after the demons had taken their diabolical dreams elsewhere, and I had dropped caring about my heart altogether, things appeared to have moved into calmer waters.

However, what I failed to see was that I had become intolerant to real life human interaction. I say real life, because I appear to be able to handle online meetings far better.

So about the real life interaction, even if it went really well, and it was someone I liked there was always something unfinished about it.
Like the parting was always a tearing, and never a natural letting go in wholeness and completion.

Even in the best cases of seeing someone or going somewhere, there was always something I had to get over, afterwards.

And if it was not the best cases, and I had felt emotional tension or aggression from the other person, it was even worse and I lost entire weeks, staring.
Just like I had spent hours in those first weeks after my lover parting, that I wrote down in my log as “in shock”;
A new category I had never needed before.
And now I needed the category again, although I was less transparent about it. This time I left the hours unaccounted for or I hid them behind or in other activities.
When they were actually the second wave of “in shock” hours, just that they were about me needing to get over social interaction, and not linked to my lover, or at least not in an obvious way.

And although most of these social situations have smoothed out, all of them have brought great insights, and although some caused beneficial change;
Although I made important and essential decisions with regard to certain projects and with regard to my future, that I could not have made if the need for change had been any less urgent;
I still feel broken and worried by the last six weeks.
Because although the work was done on healing the relationships and my life on the outside, inside of me, nothing was healed.
It’s a six week open wound.

Yesterday night I made a note in my journal, in a place where I will be reminded of it, to just accept this state of feeling perpetually broken and groggy like I partied until 3 AM last night, as my new normal.
That it is no longer realistic to postpone living my life until I feel whole and capable.

And I am also leaning towards being better off to no longer expect social interactions to be fulfilling, whole, nurturing experiences.
But to accept this as my new normal, that I come out of them feeling anything between uneasy because of the parting feeling like something is not quite right;
To upset, worried, fearful and rejected, if the contact was stressful.

That the sooner I manage to adapt to THAT being the new normal, the better.

I just had six weeks of trying to fix things, trying to analyze and learn from everything I encountered, and to heal what was hurt;
Ultimately, yes, I can heal all of those things.

But since the inside of me stayed just as broken, and I am now carrying around six weeks of what feels like trauma, moving forward it’s no longer sustainable to try to heal what happens on the outside.

Most bleak future vision:
Whatever my life is going to look like, or whatever I commit myself to doing, will need to be something that can be done while feeling that you’re isolated, that life is without joy, and that anybody reaching out to you, will come at the cost of another layer of social injury that does not wear off over time.

In all honesty, I do see one other cause of suddenly becoming overly socially anxious since the breakup, and that is because I stopped working behind the computer at night time.
And just in general;
I rarely write for a whole day anymore.

For well over a decade, writing under two names (LS Harteveld + my real name), including writing for marketing and sales;
Has been my life.

Being social, privately or for my work, has never taken center stage in my life.
The biggest part was always me being behind a computer.
Something I talked myself out of, because writing cannot be planned. And if I do cap it at a certain amount of hours, I end up with half-done blogposts, never uploaded videos, or other projects I never finish.
So then all the hours invested in it were without result.

In 2024 I forced myself to be more productive and to treat anything I could not predict the outcome of, or could not predict how long it would take me, as a leisure activity that had no place in my workweek. 
And talked myself out of nighttime writing and working in particular!
Because it messed with my sleep, or so I thought anyway.

Not realizing that obscene amounts of writing and working during the day,  including the occasional 8 hour blogpost, were what enabled me to have social interactions in the first place.

And that if I have not spent the whole day in creative and business overdrive, the least I should do is get behind my desk at night before going to bed.
Not stay to away from it.

Writing and working was what enabled me to be social, and what helped me to find my sense of Self before bed.
It’s insane that I didn’t realize I didn’t have social problems, or at least far far less, until I started cutting and capping writing and working, chasing a healthy lifestyle.
It has only made it worse.

So, all in all, my 2024 problems are more complex than
“Lover left me -> no longer tolerate social interactions”

Maybe it is like this:
1.Lover left me.
2.Tried taking better care of myself by not being on the computer at night time.
3.Fell into pit of despair and doom overanalyzing social life and social interactions, when in the past I had just wrote a new blogpost and offer, and would be able to sleep like a baby.

But for the sake of this story, and because I have another great example of exactly the same thing happening (me being surprisingly socially-resilient, as long as my love life is great) let’s just forget about the whole remedial business and writing hours part, and stick with the simplest explanation!

Lover left -> social interaction has become a challenge.
Starting with this old story.

A very long time ago, after having parted from the long-term relationship I had been in, I took on my first lover.
The breakup had also led me to abandon my work as a yoga teacher, and I had starting working at a firm where I did market research and worked directly for an account manager.
A terribly difficult man to work for.

However, because my mind was with my stolen hours with my lover, and because the smile could simply not be wiped off my face by anyone and in particular not by a manager when I was only doing the job for the money, I was completely unbothered by his volatile temper.
I even preferred it.
It dismissed me from caring for him and I always understood what my work was. 

However as soon as that first lover broke up with me, although it was definitely not that clear cut, but more like one of the many mini-breakups he would force into our affair but I didn’t know that yet, so as soon as the very first of these breakups happened, my manager and me clashed and I left within a week.
I had actually enjoyed having him around to have at least some external blowup or breakup, as my lover was the silent emailing type.
Letting my work blow up, by simply no longer smoothing out his temper, was gratifying.

But it also learned me a lesson I never forgot;
That just because you can get along with someone when you’re in love, having an affair, are with your head in the clouds?
Does not mean anything, about that relationship.

It means you have found a very appealing way to deal with reality, that’s all.

And that is the house of cards that is coming down, now that my lover has left;
For nine years, I had a very appealing way to deal with reality.
In my mind, I was always with him.
My real life, under my real name, was one big job I didn’t want.
And although it definitely got a lot better, in those nine years, and I find so much more fulfilment in my new professional life, which is no longer the only-yoga life it was when we met;
There probably will be areas where I have lost my ability to function, just like I could no longer get along with the manager, all those years ago.

After nine years of having my lover, and being a lover, of having the cover of my identity as LS Harteveld (although she is much older than 2015) and  nine years about writing about my love life;
Having all those things for such a long time, has become such a huge part about who I am.

There is no way to tell when exactly, over the course of those nine years, all these things were not, what I was actually leaning on.

When my Lauren Harteveld identity, the lover, the diarist, was not what kept it all together, just like having a lover had been what had allowed me to work as a market researcher, all those years ago.

And writing this piece has revealed that partially, yes, I can resort to my “real me” writing and marketing, and even to writing for this account Lauren Harteveld, publish my 90s diaries here, and that will help to smooth out my social life, as a problem area.
That remedial marketing and sales, and remedial writing, remedial publishing, remedial being Lauren Harteveld, is actually a thing, and I should not and even cannot afford to dismiss it, and to go without it, at this point.

I should really quit all those preconceived ideas about what a healthy  lifestyle is, and make those other things a priority again.

As opposed to the manager, I care about the people in my life. I have no desire to blow any of it up.
And the parts that were not sustainable have already fallen out the past couple of weeks.
That work is done, everything and everyone that is still in my life, is something or someone I love being there.

So I must write, and prioritize computer time and what we shall call “productive-me time”, in order to keep myself whole and to show up capable, in those social circumstances.

But ultimately there is no way of telling where that indulgence in writing and my professional endeavors end;
And the impossibilities of being single without the talents I had when I still had a lover, begin.

There is no way of telling, which parts of my life, which friendships, which identities including possibly my real one, will prove to be unsustainable.

Will prove to be unbearable, now that he is no longer there to kiss the pain away.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

The Unmasked
is a sequel to:
Death by real estate (the breakup)
PUBLISHED ON January 2, 2024

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, my 1999 diary, and possibly future chapters of The Breakup.

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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.

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Nederlands blog:
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Death by real estate (the breakup)

Published on by LS Harteveld

1 January, 2024

24 Hours ago, I still had a lover.
Someone with whom I had not slept with since January 2023 (true) but also someone who I had still seen a few times, and with whom I stayed in touch and he with me.
Someone whose birthday I remembered, who sent me the occasional photo he knew I would like and so on.

Someone who had refused all conversation starters I had given him about a shift I had felt in his energy, from as early as February 2023.
A shift I had brushed off in January 2023, in December 2022, when we had lovely dates, in which we both pleased the other, yet the sex was no longer the intense mental and physical pleasure dome it had always been!
Yes…. the shift was earlier, but because we obviously still cared a lot for each other, and still had the hots for each other, I had brushed it off.

It did not matter how I opened, which media I used, or if it was real life;
For the entire year, up until our final Whatsapp conversation yesterday the 31st, whenever I offered him the opportunity to tell me what was going on and what he needed;
He consequently, with no exception, ignored it, told half-truths and flat-out lied if needed.

At least that is all over now. Although I still do not know what is going on, I no longer have to. Death by real estate… of course I should have known he would find a way out.
An ugly one…. and WHY?!

All he had to do was say: “Goodbye. I can no longer have you in my life.”

I only function if I am not just wanted, but if a man works, every time, without exception, to be with me.
And makes it special.
Breaking up with me is super easy, because all you have to do is stop doing all the things you have done for 8 years (counting January 2023 as the end date), and we will never have sex again.

Even 2023 as a whole was proof of how easy it is to sexually break up with me.
Because apparently, he no longer wanted me, and tadaa! A year without sex.
After January; Still in touch, still had the privacy of his penthouse (I m guessing you can see the real estate construct coming!), still remembering birthdays and caring for each other.
But no sex.

He had no trouble having a good time with me, without doing anything drastic.
I think the breakup was totally uncalled for.
An unnecessary evil.

So how did he do it?
How does a man break up with his mistress after 9 years?
A mistress who had already asked him in the most direct fashion she had used the entire year, for a heart to heart, on December 11th.
Because she wanted to know what was going on.
And he had agreed, yet had not accepted her time frame, which she had planned generously before her holidays, in which she did not want any drama, but wanted to have peace in her heart, knowing she had left behind this year, what needed to be left behind.

And instead he pushed this heart-to-heart forward, to the midst of holiday season, but without saying a specific date.
And to then out of the blue, on the 31st of December, casually mention – closing with an emoji that was such a brutal insult considering the weight of blowing up their affair – that they could no longer use the condo to meet because he had had to sell it *insert any emoticon here, because they’d all be inappropriate*

I am convinced that that is not what he has been hiding from me this year. It is another woman, another life, a desire to be rid of me because I am a complication.
It is about not wanting a rerun from December 2019 when he broke up with me in a nice way, only to have our affair coming back stronger, and shining brighter than it ever had!

The condo was the way to end it. Selling the safe space we had for 9 years, the place he bought when he was in his early 30s, and that he never gave up for his wife claiming he needed it for his work here in the area – that sale, was literally doing the work for him.
He did not trust himself to be able to pull himself out of our affair, so he pulled his million dollar condo out instead.

After 9 years, he eliminated our affair by making it homeless.
And that was after not having sex for 11 months.
First starve it, then evacuate it.

And ignoring my attempts to have a conversation about it and instead blowing it up in the last hours of the year, made sure that it would as painful and cruel as possible.

9 years, and he has evicted me out of his life, without notice.
As if I ever gave the impression to be someone who will stay for even a minute, in a place where I am no longer wanted.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

post-script

This breakup story was originally posted in my publishing journal
Death by real estate| publishing journal day 11

And although I am understandably a bit shaky by this turn of events, I am also aware that every story (including diaries like “Big”, which you can find in my book store ) must have an ending.
I expect a diary running through 31 December 2023, will have Death by Real Estate as a final chapter or epilogue..

On a different timeline, Lauren1998, moving 1999, also wrote about the breakup.
In her entry And just like that. Gone. | 1998 she shares how this breakup unfolded, in her universe.

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 1999 diary.
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My diaries are available at LULU 
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The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
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A Farewell to a Darkside Warrior

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

One of the things that struck me most, during this last month of the decade, is how I seem to have spent way more time processing The Rise of Skywalker, which presented me with the most unwelcome ending for the darkside warrior Kylo Ren, than I have processing the even more unwelcome breakup from my own darksider.

Which in itself, gave reason for endless analysis, but by that time it had become a meta question:
“Why am I so not okay with a fictional character not getting his happily ever, and not with me, not getting my happily ever after?”

Not being okay with the ending Disney had for us, bore the hallmarks of a dirty breakup.
All I could think of was: WHY?!
“WHY did you do this and that in (fill in Star Wars episode 7 or 8) and this and that in (fill in novelizations of 7 or 8)? And why did this and this actor say such and such about the movie; Only to have it end this way?”
“Why does the final 30 minutes of the movie not have any dialogue for Kylo Ren?
Was it really that last minute?
After three years of production, you don’t even have scenes with dialogue that support the ending of your male protagonist?
So you just mute them and copy past the entire ending to a 40+ years saga?”

Yet, I never asked any explanation to my lover as to why he did what he did. The thought didn’t even cross my mind.
If anything, I offered an explanation to him.
During our 5 years together, he liked what I did for him. But it was something extra.
Like sugar or alcohol, or even a la carte dining at the finest restaurants.
I was something that he would always enjoy and maybe even need at some points in his life, but he would never allow it to be the basis of his life.
So he never made the impression he wanted me to be anything more, because he didn’t see a future where I played a role he understood.

I don’t want to live together, nor get married.
I don’t want to be seen as a couple, unless it’s a super modern one, where people understand I am his equal. A woman who will win over his heart time and time again, and him a man who may spend time in your bed or your life.
If he stays with you, then good for you.
It was fair game and I lost.

But I m not going to pretend to be the traditional woman next to a successful man. I m not a trophy wife, nor a gold digger, nor am I half of a power couple who go to events together and are praised and admired by the other successful people around them.
The business man and his second wife, the writer.
Not going to happen, because then we become part of the people around us. We become owned, and I am free.

But I respect that he wants to play a bigger role, a more traditional one. He already had that when we met. I applaud that when he feels the time has come to focus on that, and he wants to leave his mistress.
“Goodbye. I will always love you, and miss you so much. But I understand, I really do.”
Not:
“wHaT tHe fLyInG fUcK dID yoU Do tHAt FOr?!”

As disturbed I was by Disney’s ending, and what it meant in the grand scheme of things – “Who was behind it? What purpose did it serve?” – that’s how easy I could let go when it was my own lover.
I have a couple of pages of notes next to me.
They cover a lot.
From all the plot holes in The Rise of Skywalker, to the symbolic meaning of The Emperor, the symbolism of killing off a dark and conflicted character who is loved by the female heroine.
The notes speak of ways in which Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo could come back, because the world where he died, Exogol, is part of the World Between Worlds.
The rules of life and death do not apply there.

There are many notes, but in the end I think the only purpose they really served was for me to understand we are never entitled to happy endings.
Not even if it’s Disney, let alone real life.
That people may or may not come back.
But that the most important thing is that you let them go, when they have to leave.
And never stop loving them.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

.
coming soon: new books

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow this blog. The subscription button to this blog is on this page, probably on the right.
.
Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Woman in Love | how a Bon Jovi concert turned me into a better lover

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I went through my notes about my lover and me.
Most of them have been written into a retro-erotic story situated summer 1994, but I had not done anything with the parts that were related to my Bon Jovi concert.
Because when the story takes place, in 1994, the last time Bon Jovi had played The Netherlands was April 1993.
It didn’t make sense that the protagonist would compare an encounter with her lover, to a concert she had been to the year before.
So I didn’t use that story line.
Until this morning, when I went through the notes to migrate them to my diary. I realized the insights were already starting to fade and I wanted to relive them, understand them the way I had after the concert, and after the encounter with my lover.
For me the best way to deepen my understanding of something, is to write about it.
So that is this blog post.
.

My love life

Early 2015, I got involved with a married man, whom I call Mr.Big.
Like most mistresses I assumed the situation was temporary, and that he’d leave his wife for me.
When that didn’t happen, I found myself not just adjusting to the situation, but actually thriving on it. I discovered my true sexual identity, thanks to this relationship.
Which was that I am a real mistress;
Someone who is deeply in love with one man, but wants him to have his own life and have other women too.
I understood that my longest relationship (14 years) had not failed because I was getting restless being faithful (which I was), or because I had been yearning for adventure (which I had), but because I was with a monogamous man.
It didn’t provide the excitement I needed, from other female competition and having to work for his attention.

I had broken up the relationship because I could feel it didn’t fit who I was sexually, but in all those years of being single I had never been able to pinpoint it.
Now I did.

It really had never been him. It was me. I needed something different. My affair with Mr.Big made it clear what that something was.
I have been seeing other men since then, but those are platonic friendships.
And I ve also fallen in love with someone else in 2018. With Christopher.
So just once.
Twice if I count Jon Bon Jovi.
Thrice if I count Nikki Sixx!
But as you can see, I have a strong preference for unavailable men.
And although Christopher was no rock star, he proved equally hard to get.
Falling in love with all of them, were no signs of my feelings for my lover fading. If anything, they have only gotten stronger.
And this year I picked up being a Bon Jovi fan, and went to the concert June 13, in the Netherlands/ Nijmegen, where I live.
It was the best day of my life and Bon Jovi has inspired both countless posts on this blog, as well as an entire series on YouTube*
Three months after the concert, I m still learning how the concert experience and encounters with my lover, are similar to each other.
And how one inspired the other, and vice versa.
.

Ain’t no woman, like a woman in love

As I m writing this, I m listening to the Bon Jovi album Keep the Faith, and the song “Woman in love”.

There ain’t no woman
Like a woman in love
Ain’t nothing she can’t rise above
She can part the water
When the seas get rough
Ain’t no woman
Like a woman in love

If there is a part of my success which can be conveyed to others, an explanation why I am so content with both my love life as well as the Bon Jovi concert I went to, it’s the fact that I am in love.
And that I don’t need validation for that.

It’s not a case of:
“I am your fan, but now you have to give me a great concert experience or I will be heavily disappointed.”
or
“I am in love with you, but now you have to choose for me, because otherwise I look silly.”
No.
Being in love is MY business, and the gift it brings is the being in love itself. When it exists it is unconditional, and if it no longer exists nothing can bring it back.
Least of all conditions being changed for the better or terms being met.

If there is a secret to my life, it is that I take full responsibility for my own feelings, and I honor them. I live by them. My heart speaks the ultimate truth that I will live by.
And by nothing else.
.

Preparation, presence and postpartum

In the days before the concert, I was hyper aware that I was leaning heavily onto my experience with my lover, in order to get the best concert experience.
That I would not have been so certain of my moves, not have the awareness that what I was doing would contribute to the overall experience, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I had done this countless of times.

The big difference between being a lover and being a normal girlfriend, is that although my lover and me do not always have sex when we see each other, we do always have a good time.
It is very dense in quality.
We are fully aware of the other one being there.

This is – I think – why most people are both unfit to be a lover, as well as to have a lover: 
This is a peak performance that “requires” your full presence. The moment you start hiding, it’s over.
Just like Jon Bon Jovi had 2 hours and 20 minutes to make a lasting impression, my lover and me only have a few hours to enjoy each other.

So that is the easiest thing to explain the difference between being lovers, and being in a normal relationship:
It is very pure.
If we’d go away for a weekend, we would already have to tone down and get into energy save mode, because you can’t keep that up for 48 hours, anymore than Jon Bon Jovi can be on stage for 48 hours.

Peak performance and peak awareness are key assets both parties have to possess in order for it to work out.
That’s why I credit my lover for this as well. Most men would not be able to deliver a few hours of affair, anymore than they would do well being on stage and entertaining 50.000 people.
It’s a craft.

But before I was even consciously considering how being (mentally) present at a rock concert was similar to being with a lover, I noticed how the preparations were the same.
The looking forward to something, and mentally tuning into what is going to happen.
Sometimes I think it is because in recent years we (in the field of personal development) have put way too many eggs, if not all, in the basket of being present in the now.
The basket of mindfulness.

Peak experiences demand preparation time, which are not in the present time. They are about bringing the energy of a future experience towards the now. Not in the way that you can say:
“You have to do this and this *checklist given* and then you will have a great sexual experience slash great concert”
No.
This goes way, way further than that.
This is about literally tuning into the energy, the emotion of what is about to happen. This is about ritual and mental preparation, much more than a physical one.
Sure.
I shower, shave, groom, and carefully select my clothes.
I know where we are going, buy tickets, visit the venue and make sure I know any additional and specific information that could come in handy.

One fan from New Jersey who was following the tour for ten days, whom I helped out with a rubber band and plastic foil to cover her water bottle, because our caps were confiscated at security, called me:
The best prepared fan she had ever met.
I know all about coming prepared.
If you see your lover only occasionally, you have a routine of not leaving anything to chance.
But still!
It wasn’t in the plastic foil or the rubber band, anymore than it is in the lube or the condoms I bring. I could lose them halfway, or forget to put them in my bag.

The real effect comes from the thinking it through beforehand.
So in preparing for the concert, I recognized my routines from preparing for my lover.
And when I was there at the venue, without checking my phone for the entire day and totally present during every minute of the show, I knew this was so familiar to me, because this zoning out of reality and tuning into a whole new world, was what I had been doing for four and a half year with my lover.
But there was one thing that happened, that I did not expect.
Just like my affair had prepared me for a great concert, the Bon Jovi concert in turn, learned me to be even better at my affair.

Firstly, my experience to absorb energy was heightened.
After the concert, my gums were tingling. Something I only have after an orgasm. It made me aware that even without sex (I wasn’t even aware I had a body, during the concert), and without physical proximity or touch, I can collect, receive and generate, energy.
And at my next encounter with Mr.Big I used that.
Because I knew I didn’t technically need the sex anymore, to get something overwhelming out of it I started soaking up the energy at a much earlier phase.
During the concert it had been during the song “Lay your hands on me” when I had surrendered even deeper.
Now I play with that.
Knowing there is always a deeper layer of surrender.
You just have to dare to let go and drop into it.
Until your gums are tingling and you come out shaky and emotional.

I cried in his arms after, and with the Bon Jovi concert the postpartum cry came as I was doing the dishes around midnight.
It’s not even grief: It what comes after the beauty of being overwhelmed.
The second part where the Bon Jovi concert has altered how I am with my lover, is in the time afterwards.
What I need to unwind.

Before the Bon Jovi concert, I was unable to function in the normal world, basically for weeks, but the last 72 hours it was hopeless.
So I “just” postponed everything to the day after the concert: For sure I would be able pick it up then, right?
Wrong.
What the Bon Jovi concert taught me is that just as I needed time to build up towards it, I needed at least half of that time to cool down.
I wrote.
I made videos.
But most of all I did nothing, just processing my thoughts.

I was already starting to forget about that, but when the day after I saw my lover, I was suddenly really tired, I remembered:
Rest.
Take your time.
As long as you need to.
Don’t rush from one peak experience into the next mundane thing on your calendar or your to-do list.
That taking time afterwards, weeks if needed, is another key to having peak experiences.
I will never forget that.
.

Great pleasure comes with great pain

At the concert and at my last encounter with my lover, I had not yet started looking for help with my mental health.
Now don’t panic – I m okay.
It’s just that compared to other people I m a bit extreme.
It’s kind of a my way or the highway situation here, where I just don’t understand how most people can work so hard, in real jobs.
How can you give 40 hours a week to a job without losing your mind?

As someone who has supported her freestyle writing “career” teaching a few yoga classes a week, I just couldn’t get my head around it. Not even now, when I don’t teach group classes anymore and haven’t figured out where the money is going to come from.
Just that I don’t feel like parting with my whatever-the-fuck-I-want-to-do creative lifestyle.
After many frustrating weeks and conversations with professionals, I finally got a couple of preliminary observations that were worth checking out.

The most remarkable one, and one I had actually suggested myself, is autism.
Autism would explain why I hang on to writing and fear having it being taken away. Because writing can then be seen not so much as a tool for personal development (which I ve always considered it) but as a coping strategy to deal with life in general.
A survival thing.
Autism would relabel writing from a passion into a necessity, which definitely feels closer to the truth.

But an autism diagnoses would also put my sexual preferences into a broader perspective: As an autistic woman, it would make total sense that I find sex and a concert overwhelming, and something I need to recover from.
It explains both the intense pleasure, as well as the pain afterwards.
I had a meltdown the week after the concert, that was so bad, I don’t even want to think about it. Ultimately I wrote about it* once I got my head straightened out on that one. 

Autism would also offer an interesting neurological perspective to why I m monogamous. And that although I will never exclude having two or even three lovers in the future – providing I m madly in love – it certainly explains why I prefer to keep it at one and rule out one-night stands or short affairs.
Unless it would be with Jon Bon Jovi himself, I guess.
Monogamy as a neurological disorder where I poorly handle change, offers an interesting perspective on why I like this mistress thing so much.
But the pain…. oh the pain!
Unbelievable.

Every time I think I know what’s coming, I don’t see it coming.
There’s the meltdown after the concert.
But I also remember the meltdowns of having my heart broken, once in 2008 by my first secret lover and once in 1989 (by a boyfriend who looked like Jon Bon Jovi*)
Damn, they were ugly meltdowns!
With my current lover too:
The first months, I felt absolutely horrible the day after.
Like my heart had been ripped out and stepped on, from not being “his” woman.

Becoming a mistress who enjoys herself was not something that came easily.
The penny started dropping years ago, when I was still single from 2007-2015, and it was not an easy lesson to learn:
With great pleasure comes great pain.
The sorrow the morning after is linked to the pleasure the night before.
You can’t avoid one, without the other.

The meltdown in the week after the Bon Jovi concert, was similar to the meltdown after my first lover, in 2008.
And when I met my current lover in 2015, the fear that I would get my heart broken and end up crawling over the kitchen floor in tears was still omnipresent.
I honestly didn’t know if I would survive that another time.
But in the end I risked it.

I think with the Bon Jovi concert too, I would get better at it. That falling as deep as I did, is not necessary. But you have to train it, you can’t fly immediately.
And some pain will always be there.
Just like I have with my lover, even now, over four years in.
I m still jealous, and feel uncertain. It’s just that I now realize it makes our time together all the sweeter.

In the notes I read something I have used in the erotic story, I wrote earlier:
That I climax easily from penetration.
In missionary or when I sit on top.
It’s just that when we turn around to doggy style, it almost immediately becomes excruciating. Now since we both know this, it has its own charm.
Because sometimes you want it to hurt.
And he knows it, and he plays with it.
But nevertheless, it is strange to have such a position predominantly being about pain, or fear of pain, when you have another position that for the majority of women would never be enough to have an orgasm, and yet for me it brings pleasure.

Pleasure that I can surrender to, deeper and deeper still.
But if you turn the pleasure around, you have the same amount of pain.
You can learn to cope with the pain and even play with it.
But ultimately you can’t have pleasure without pain.
You can’t be a woman in love, without coming to terms with being hurt.

.
~Lauren

An unexamined life is not worth living

*Dec 2023, links have been removed because this material is no longer online

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I forgot how to breathe…

Published on by LS Harteveld1 Comment

What happened between me and Mr.Big this week, almost got lost in pre-employment stress of Oh My God I Can’t Share This

I think I tried everything.
To stop diary writing.
To stop writing all together.
To write whenever the mood strikes and let writing take until the post was ready. Which usually meant it hijacked my day and kept me behind my computer for 6 hours minimum.
I tried writing for 30 minutes.
Which including editing, and finding a photo always turned into one hour.
Which turned into two.
Which turned into however long it took, and brought me back to:
Stop writing all together.
And the diary writing, the personal life: Oh, the things I ve tried and decided, to feel better!
In order to preserve the good, to enhance it, to create a whole world out of the times I saw my lover Mr.Big.
And then the moments of doubt and anxiety for feeling like oversharing. As if I would not lose him every time, if only I could conform to secrecy instead of writing about our time together.
As if my loneliness was a punishment for writing.
And then the coaching and teaching yoga!
From offering it, to not offering it, to offering it only under my real name (and not this one).
I have a draft of a yoga program (a two hours blog post +) and my coaching program for the Dutch market is still up, as well. Neither one I will be posting or selling anymore.
Because everything changed last Monday.
And then today it changed even more.
Last Monday the decision to stop making my living as an independent and get a normal job became final. And I immediately stopped my yoga channel under my real name.
There was no point in making yoga videos as promo material, and it simply wasn’t a part of my purpose work.
For the first day, it was just that.
But then yesterday night I went to a social event, and I received this powerful vision on my new life as a writer. And I was literally counting out the hours I would have for my purpose work, at the start and finish of every work day.
I had not drawn any major conclusions from that – because there was time to write and do yoga next to a job.
But then this morning I started a blog post, yet didn’t finish it.
And I also recorded the same My Life in Bon Jovi songs video four times.
Until it hit me what was wrong:
I felt vulnerable sharing my personal life, and in particular on YouTube.
I had no idea if I would be able to apply for jobs, or do my work, if I set the bar so high in my personal life (being a secret mistress) that I had to write about it, in order to stay standing.
Maybe, taking a job meant I had to stop doing that.
Maybe I needed to become normal in my private, and sexual life, so that I didn’t need to write about it.
But then this is who i am.
I know this.
And I know that especially if I have a job, I need to stay in touch with my inner world. To sit behind my computer and “breathe”.
To let whatever comes out, come out, typing away on the key board.
So after the fourth take for my YouTube, I decided to quit YouTube entirely, and focus on my writing.
My real purpose work.
To stop wasting time (over-) sharing myself in YouTube videos, when it would already be hard enough to do my writing AM before work, or at night time.
So I made that final YouTube video, my farewell, and thought I had “solved” it.
Until the stomach ache, the doubt, and the anxiety that I would go down the rabbit hole of my inner world every morning, AND THEN – face the world.
Would I even be able to do this?
Was it really just as simple as deleting YouTube, to focus on my purpose work, writing?
Then why was I feeling so, so bad?
Why did I title this blog post:
I forgot how to breathe?
And then during the typing of this blog post, something that my coach Sara has said to me months ago, popped back to mind.
The job is there to support the creativity!
Not the other way around.
I repeat: NOT the other way around.
Months and months ago, when my insights in wanting a job were far from the firm decision that it is now  – Sara already pointed out not to fall into the trap of compromising my art, in order to fit into a job.
And here I was, feeling shaken after my “big” YouTube fall out at the thought of still having to share myself on this blog..
I felt daunted, by the idea of doing the only thing I love without question. Without payment, without recognition, and with a message that just oozes from my pores on a daily fucking basis;
To write.
Getting personal.
Going DEEP.
I genuinely thought that in light of getting a job I was forgetting how to “breathe”, how to write. Afraid that I would not be able to do it because at 8.30 I would see people.
Colleagues.
But no, Sara was right.
Aside from the sheer impossibility that I would forget or could skip, something that comes as natural as breathing – I DO only have room in my life for a job  that still allows me to do the art.
This post was me writing myself into a solution.
Remembering Sara’s message is soothing, and I will keep it in mind. Somewhere in the front.
But I also want to share here, right at the bottom of this blog post, hidden almost, what happened between Mr.Big and me, when we made love.
The story I tried to tell in this morning’s draft post and four times over in the video that I did not post, and deleted all versions of it: The story how we got back together.
It had been two months since we’d last seen each other. And it had been one of those times where I had been uncertain if he’d even want me back.
Or if he’d just let our affair die out..
I knew this was part of the agreement, part of what we had. That I put up with the periods of silence, but it seemed as if this had become a new normal.
As I remembered it, in our first year, it never happened.
In our second year it may have happened twice.
In our third it became frequent and ever since the final 18 months all I remember is dropping into that zone of not knowing, every time again and again, after seeing him.
And every time I promised myself I wouldn’t buy into my stories of drama.
I would sit it out.
I would trust.
And yet every time I had to break word with myself, and worry. Worry so much that it would be over.. Until we saw each other again, and I was happy.
Most people understand that this pattern leads to a better, more exciting sex life. Something we did have in the first two years. Very much.
I never fantasize about sex with other men, because Mr.Big is tied to my deepest darkest fantasies, in a way that I m beginning to think no man will ever be.
Even if I m in love – I m beginning  to doubt my ability to enjoy being with another body than Mr.Big’s. If another man’s attention, focus, and love making skills will ever be able to satisfy me.
Is it ever fair, to make love to someone else, as long as I m in love with Mr.Big?
The older I get, the more I m leaning towards:
“No, that is not fair. Your body and mind only respond to Mr.Big.”
So most people understand that this pattern, where I have to keep the faith for months on end sometimes – influences our longing and our sexual desire.
But what they don’t understand, and maybe that’s also because I have not verbalized this explicitly – is that if the test has been this heavy, the time period this long, and if I have missed him so much and have been on the point of believing he will never return?
You don’t just hop back into having sex.
You are not crazy with lust for each other, and my body seems to carry all the mental scars of feeling lonely and rejected.
Of feeling abandoned.
My mind can survive, and I know I need a terrible amount of stress and strain, in order to even feel something, sexually.
Rationally, I understand I m better off having this problem, than having the same man sitting next to me on the couch for nights in the row.
But the body cannot be reasoned with.
And Mr.Big understands that. That despite me accepting that I don’t see him as often as I would like, that he needs to start from scratch with me, physically.
He excels at comforting me, making me feel safe.
He asks me, what I need to relax.
If I want to hug, we hug.
If I need to cry, I cry.
If I want to spoon naked in bed together, we do so.
And he will do all of those things without initiating more. He will never press for anything, not even the remotely sexual: All he wants for me is to feel good.
And if that means we won’t have sex, we don’t have sex.
As uncompromising as he is, not attending to my needs in the weeks and sometimes months in between, that’s how devoted and patient he is, when I m there with him.
He can give in two hours, what I would get from a normal man in two weeks.
So this week’s reunion was not a sexual, pushing-the-boundaries-of-civil, adventure where we could tick things off our bucket list.
It was sensitive, emotional and deeply satisfying both on an emotional as well as on a physical level, because I came multiple times.
My orgasms just came effortlessly.
And he had one but just like always, he waited until he could feel I was fully satisfied, and it was in a perfect melt-together moment of union.
Those were all things I tried to share in the video, which ultimately led me to the decision to cancel my entire channel.
Those were the things I didn’t want to write about, because the thought of sharing myself like this, suddenly scared me, in the light of my future career.
But writing this blog post has brought me so many insights.
That Sara was right – the job will be there for me, to support me creating art.
And also, and unfortunately for everybody perhaps, my sexual relationships but even more so my internal world, will always be this complicated.
YES, I will always need writing to balance them out.
NO I can’t stop, because I cannot live in this dark, and often very lonely mind, without releasing into this blog.
And there was a third thing I started realizing as I was writing this blog.
That this is sacred.
This is when the magic comes through.
A leaving of the world, into another. And with my time with Mr.Big being so limited, and my suffering so deep, this writing is therapy.
Writing this blog is a daily one, or a two, or a six hour release.
And it’s a bare necessity.
Just like breathing. 

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

About this blog

Is the fifth chapter of
7-figure Rock Star Writer part 3: Submission

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Sex in the world between worlds

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I was going to see him two weeks ago but I cancelled because of personal stuff going on in my life. Things I didn’t want to burden our date with.
To me our time together is sacred.
Yet I informed my lover Mr.Big on what was going on, the reason I was cancelling my date.
Which was a rarity already!
We never speak to each other about what’s going on in our lives.
We don’t have to. I usually share everything with the world, through these blog posts. And he just keeps his thoughts to himself. Sometimes I inquisitively poke his mind, knowing very well he’ll kick me out.
.
So two weeks ago I did share the story about what was going in my life but it didn’t bring us closer together or anything. It was a confirmation that it was a good thing that we kept our affair so clean of drama.
Our dates were places of magic.
A realm where we were “only” lovers, and had been for the last four years.
Yet I never counted on this world to keep on existing. Even when he’d ask me out on a date, it could still go either way. 

Somewhere in the first year I had discovered that the chance that he would one day friend-zone me, was a lot higher than the risk he would ever fully break-up with me.
But this also made it more complicated to know where I was standing. And the past 6 to 8 weeks, had been particularly straining. I had effectively ignored the gnawing insecurity of not knowing where I stood.
But it had been there in the back of my mind none the less.
All the way through the entire holiday season.

I had no idea if we were still on, or if he had another lover and if that was a reason to stop having sex with me.  Or maybe he wanted to save his marriage, and that required his full attention.
Maybe our dates would only be in cafes and other public places, from now on. Away from the seclusion of his apartment, the heart of our affair.

In retrospect I had been taking a huge risk, breaking our code of silence around our personal affairs on a moment where I had no idea what my status was.
Yet on our date, the newly scheduled one, I dressed nicely and I was looking forward to it like crazy. I seemed to be absolutely certain we were still on, even though I had no proof to back it up.
We had a lovely date, and he laughed at my uncertainty.
I drank wine, even though I have stopped drinking. It added to the feeling of otherworldliness, like a shamanistic experience where you drink a hallucinating beverage to travel across.

I was invited to come over to his house, and we had lovely sex. So new, almost uncomfortable even. But it made it extra special.
As if we really were two different people every time, in an ever changing relationship.
When I took a condom from his pack, I didn’t count or estimate if he had used them without me. When I went to the bathroom to clean up and I threw our condom in the bin, I didn’t look for traces of other women who might have been there recently. I even noticed a feeling somewhere between jealousy and excitement and became aware that I had chosen this insecurity.
That I liked the thrill of being chosen over and over, instead of being the only one.

If there really was or had been someone else, I didn’t have to know the details because Mr.Big gave me the only thing that mattered: His full attention.
He was the perfect lover, in the perfect place:
Our world between worlds. 

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

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Sex on Kairos time

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

I m here, on a Thursday, behind my desk, and I ve just spent the first two hours of my day on an eclectic combination of sorting my Deleted Emails box (yeah, don’t ask!), texting with a friend, reading motivational blogs, and studying articles on the Greek concept of Kairos;
A concept of time when you’re totally absorbed in the moment. 
Time-less-ness.
Awareness of Now and non-awareness of Self.
The time of creativity and breakthroughs.
I know Kairos time from when I’m writing, when I can go on for hours without food and am totally absorbed by my work. But I also know it from spending time with my lover. After four years, two hours with him still feel like an eternity.
A heightened awareness of every second.
I intended to write about Kairos, this unruly brother of our linear chronological time.
Until I realized I had nothing to say, or nothing new. There is so much out there already, on Chronos (or Kronos) versus Kairos.
This is the best description I have found:

Kronos is mechanistic and deterministic, time that is ruled by the dead hand of the past. Kronos devours us with remorseless certainty. Kronos turns life into stone.

Kairos is creative and serendipitous.
Kairos is time that is energized by the living dream of the future and presents us with unlimited possibility. Kairos turns fate into destiny.

~Lonnie Kliever, Artellamagazine, 2003. 

The other reason I didn’t want to write about Kairos after all, was because I had connected it to my daily writing;
On weekdays, I start the day by writing a blog post and it will go on until it’s done. This could be ninety minutes of writing, or eight hours.
I was incredibly proud of being able to say that!
“I m on Kairos time! Blog posts will go on for as long as the have to!”
* belching laughter *
But this morning that same Kairos time showed me that it’s not that simple. That maybe I want to study, or clear-out my Inbox. And that although I know that all those “Don’t procrastinate!” warnings, and even the “Eat two frogs every morning!” success rule (know that one?), have never proven to be useful to me, STILL!, I felt slightly embarrassed that I spent this morning not writing.
Not eating frogs.
Doing nothing productive.
And then I felt even more embarrassed because I knew it was only a sign that I was a slave to Chronos thinking. Even I, had no idea what Kairos time was really about.
Even I, could not accept that Kairos time starts with not having plans on what should be done. It starts with creating space for things to happen. For things to unfold. And also with a tuning in. With above.
Because Kairos is also called God’s Time, divine time. The idea that things will happen when they need to happen, and that it is your duty to create space, so you can be led.
In the first week of January, I started writing a sex book, offline. 
And at the risk of being blasphemous, talking about God and this topic in one blog post, I would like to refer to it.
So the book was about sexual non-consent play.
And it fucked with my head so much, that it destabilized my life within 7 days. Nice religious reference here, but it really was 7 days of uncreating, and unbalancing.
I decided to drop the project and go back to online writing.
But I remember the shocking conclusion of the last chapter I wrote.
It was that everything from the power play to the play-rape;
To the sexual acts that I find intriguing or which I downright love;
Were not nearly as deviant or strange I thought them to be.
I even concluded that non-consensual play with my lover, easily qualified as my most spiritual side.
You know why?
Because it is completely in the moment.
When you’re playing on the boundaries of non-consent, you’re both fully engaged in what’s going on. You can’t go through the moves, you can’t rely on what you did last time.
Our consent play teleports us to a magical place, where it’s just the two of us, but even we are different here.
Him and me, we’re not our usual selves. We’re filled with potential, with everything we can be, everything we want to be.
But most of all, it’s such an otherworldly experience because we are aware of the NOW.
We really are suddenly on Kairos time.
Wild and unruly.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

About this blog

Sex on Kairos time is Chapter 24 of my diary 7-figure Rock Star Writer

Follow on Facebook or Twitter,
NEW connect on Linkedin

My diaries en erotica are available at 
my BOOK SHOP
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If you check your cart, you can select your store
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with the flag in the upper right corner.

new books

I m currently working on publishing my latest books:
1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2018
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit (Dutch)

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Sex talk

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Like all philosophers, his job wasn’t to be a philosopher.
And in his case it was an obvious one:
He was an artist.
Someone who creates exactly what he wants and manages to get paid for it.
Or takes a temp job to make ends meet.
I ve always considered myself an artist too. Initially I called myself a writer. But since I have no interest in my own craft, nor in other writers unless they write novels based on their own lives, it soon became apparent I wasn’t a writer at all.
I am a thinker.
I want to know the meaning behind a situation, a feeling, a moral judgement. I just keep on poking and unraveling until I know Why it is so.
And from there I will change reality, by redefining it through writing.
You can say the writing is my art, but in reality the process of taking everything in, digesting it, and creating new ideas about it, is my art.
My art starts when I open my eyes in the morning, and start to think about something.
I usually don’t leave the bed, until I have so much to say about the topic, I can’t think any more without first releasing it onto the page.
Maybe between the philosopher and me, I was actually more of a philosopher than he was. But regardless of who was what, we turned out to be extremely compatible.
So compatible that I told him all my sex secrets from the last four years, which I had not told anyone in a long time. The friends I could discuss this with, had already heard all these stories, and my secret lover Mr.Big and me had not had that kind of groundbreaking sex in a long time.
I had nothing new to tell.
But the philosopher didn’t know me, and he met my non-negotiable criteria to sharing my sex stories.
These criteria were:
1. that someone was male,
2. that he was sexually active and preferably pretty entrepreneurial with the whole thing, and
3. that he had a complete understanding that sharing my sex secrets – which were not really secrets at all, I just chose not to share – but he needed to understand that me sharing my sex secrets didn’t mean that we were going to have sex.
That I was sharing them for my own pleasure.
To relive the moment.
Late last year, I decided the only thing I am actively going to nurture is the sexual relationship I have with myself. I m going to break the almost junkie-dealer dependency I have created with my supplier Mr.Big. Talking about my sex life, is like creating a glow of years past, to warm myself by.
More than ever, I wanted to tell about the times when I did still have an exciting sex life. And had cycled home with violent cramps in my pelvic floor, when my body was throwing a tantrum after anal sex.
Times that belonged to the past.
Maybe it had been bad timing, in 2018. Maybe our dates had been on the wrong days, when I wasn’t ready either physically or mentally.
Sometimes I thought we didn’t have that same foundation anymore, of trust, and surrender. That the foundation where I trusted my body to him, and he trusted his whole life to me, was gone.
In the heyday, he had owned my body. Not in the master-slave way, at least not explicitly. But he had been sexually dominant. He didn’t ask or hesitate, the way other men had. Instead he would seduce me into full submission, until I was begging for it.
And if I was lucky, we would uplevel our game to where he didn’t ask at all, and just took me, abused me, raped me.
He had been the only man, with whom I didn’t have to play-act really poorly, in order to make sure he wouldn’t feel like he was doing something wrong.
I would fight back and cry real tears, and the pleasure was unbelievable.
Yet at the same time, he knew when to stop before I did. Before I had decided if I was still up for this, he’d stop and ask: “Are you okay?”
He knew me better than I knew myself.
And yet 2018 had gone by without being on that edge with him. I would receive minimal but sweet messages, an occasional platonic date, and satisfying but rather toned down sex compared to what we used to have.
And because I wanted to know Why, I came up with a reason.
The reason we stopped having that type of sex, is because something has shifted between us. And it’s not “lust turns into love”, which is the most probable cause, when you’ve been “together” for four years.
In our case it’s because our relationship isn’t stable anymore.
From the outside it still looks like a regular mistress and lover relationship, but I fell in love with someone else for the first time.
And around that same time I felt something shift on his side as well.
Maybe there is someone else, I don’t know.
But I suspect we don’t have that same level of trust, where he trusts me with his life/his integrity/his secret.
And in return I can trust him with my body.
I hope 2019 is going to be different. But if it’s not that’s okay too.
I ve internalized my entire sexuality, and let go of the need to make things work in the outside world. I am my own woman now.
Which was why talking to the philosopher about my sex life, was more than welcome.
The philosopher had past all three tests.
The first one: He was male.
The second one: He had an adventurous sex life.
He flaunted a “don’t know which side is up” approach to sex, that had of course resulted in the most messy sex life since Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love.
Perfect.
I will never talk about my sex life with men who are not happy with theirs or who are married.
I have one married friend, the Archaeologist, with whom I did talk about my sex life on two occasions. The first occasion was when I had anal sex with Mr.Big for the first time. A story I somehow managed to stretch for an hour!
And the first time I told it (to my friend Pierre) it had been three hours.
An hour was the condensed version. I have no idea how! LOL
Losing my anal virginity is the opening story from my book Big.
How are you going to fill three hours with what’s written on a few pages?
The second time I talked to the married Archaeologist about my sex life, was when Mr.Big had used three butt plugs on me, ranging from the size of a thin penis, to the size of a really thick one.
It was not just my achievement, that it fit: Mr.Big had been extremely gentle.
I m starting to believe that Mr.Big understands the art of balancing: Whenever he can feel I am tensed about something, for example the first time I was in his apartment, he downplays himself completely.
And upon seeing that largest butt plug anyone would feel intimidated.
Afterwards I sent the picture of the three butt plugs to my gay best friend, and even he was intimidated!
So when something is already stressful, or exciting to me, Mr.Big is extra gentle and sweet. Which can also explain why we didn’t do anything sexually remarkable in 2018. Our affair was going through hard times, and we don’t communicate about such things. The stress levels just build up.
The power play we used to have dates back to 2017 and before that; When the situation on all other levels, was completely stable.
I could never have a messy sex life, the way the Philosopher had. I need a clearly defined relationship, like the one from a mistress and her lover, so I can play and experiment sexually.
The Philosopher also met the third criteria:
He understood that me talking about sex, didn’t mean that we were going to have sex.
Although this was obviously the hardest one.
But I took my chances because I was excited to share.
So I talked about anal sex , butt plugs, power play.
And he wanted to know which role I had during power play (this was at the beginning of our conversation) and he managed to guess wrong.
And even to back it up with completely invalid arguments, on why he thought that.
I liked that. He wasn’t afraid to be wrong, just as he wasn’t afraid to be rejected.
He made me realize that’s why “normal” men bore me: They communicate in a way so that I can’t reject them.
Just yesterday someone who has been trying to get my attention for years, opened his car window to talk to me, again skillfully ignoring my cold shoulder responses. And then said: “If you want to, come over, right?”
Like a sales man he’s aware that I’ll jump at the first opportunity to say no.
All men do.
That’s why they never ask you something you can say no to, like asking you out.
Another reason why they don’t ask you out, is that they’re married and they don’t want to go out. But I never invest in chatting on Whatsapp or something.
Either we see each other in real life, or we don’t see each other at all.
Period.
And not asking me out because of fear of rejection, but in the meantime waving your neediness in my face, signaling “Pick me! Pick me!”, has to be one of the things that makes women resort to violence.
The Philosopher on the other hand, was an entirely different cattle of fish.
Just like he had not been shy at all, about asking me out on a date.
He was now shameless in his analysis on why I was dominant in bed. I think his strongest argument was that I was obviously ballsy and strong, so I could never be on the Anastacia Steele end of the stick.
Anastacia Steele is the submissive virgin from 50 Shades of Grey.
50 Shades was actually the Philosopher’s main source of information in order to determine whether I was dominant or submissive.
Again, something normal men would try to hide.
They’d say: “Well I had this woman once and based on that, my estimate is…”
The Philosopher was wrong, but he wasn’t afraid to be wrong nor was he afraid to flaunt his limited knowledge on the matter and his sketchy sources.
I loved it.
So naturally I informed him that I was submissive, and had been for as long as I could remember.
He also asked me why I liked anal sex. From a woman’s perspective he couldn’t see the benefit.
This time – something that spoke for him – he indicated that he was curious. But that I should only answer if I wanted to.
I wanted to.
I answered the reason I liked anal sex was not a physical one: it was entirely mental. It fit in with being submissive. It was on that fine line between pleasure and pain, between surrender and humiliation. It was an absolute mindfuck.
As was my entire sex life.
I explained that I was not into things like massages, multiple orgasms, or anything physical. The hole thing, my entire sexuality, was a mind game.
And he asked me about porn. Which he assumed I wouldn’t like then, because it was entirely physical.
“On the contrary!” I answered.
And I explained to him mainstream porn had so many rough, degrading sex, I could watch any porn clip on my Twitter feed to get satisfied.
And that I was probably Steve Holmes (a porn star) biggest fan.
The Philosopher only interrupted my praise of porn, to ask me if I was a real person.
We ordered our too-many-to-count drink. The only time I remember drinking this much was on my nights with the Archaeologist.
When I had told the Archaeologist the story about the butt plugs, I remembered I still had the picture of the toys on my phone.
The one I had sent to my gay best friend.
“I have a picture!” I exclaimed.
A photo of the three black butt plugs, medium to extra large, standing in the windowsill. Just like my gay best friend, the Archaeologist could not believe the largest one had actually gone in.
I told the Philosopher that when the Archaeologist and me had said our goodbyes, he had turned around, in the middle of the street.
Staring at me, as if he was in trance.
“I still can’t believe it,” was the only thing he said.
In the middle of the night the Philosopher and me said our goodbyes, in a warm hug, that was not sexual and I didn’t want it to be either.
But I just had the best day in years.
Part of me wanted something, I just didn’t know what it was.
“I still can’t believe it,” The Philosopher whispered softly.
Neither could I.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

7-Figure Rock Star Writer

Sex talk is episode 16 of my project 7-figure rock star writer  
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I quit writing (about my love life)

Project M. and in particular its last chapter Like a Prayer is my final diary for an indefinite period of time. 

I ve been writing about my love life, pretty much non-stop, since 2006, the moment I became single. And although it has brought me many things – in particular the opportunity to have relationships that are way out of my league – it has now started to constrict me.
The cage of self-reflection and transparency, that I built to protect myself, has become a prison.
I need to start living, and start experiencing life, without the pen.
Or at least without diary writing/ blogging about my real life.

I m going to use this time to create my four new books

One Dutch book with columns:
Blote Kont
Verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit

One English book with columns:
I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

One English book about Mistresshood:
The Big Mistress

And one diary 2017-2018, called Reboot.
Which will also include my last diary Project M.

Like a prayer { final chapter, Lauren quits writing }

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Life is a mystery
Everyone must stand alone
I hear you call my name
And it feels like home

~Madonna, Like a Prayer

If I ve learned anything, in my four years with my secret lover Mr.Big – and I learned all of these lessons the hard way, in the first six months – it is that things either ARE or they are not.
Something either IS there, or it is not.
You can put words to things, and even bicker over which word it should be that defines you – a relationship, an affair, a marriage; cheating, a mistake or true love – it doesn’t make any difference.
You can enhance things by writing about them, or make an experience more bearable by reframing your thoughts, but you cannot create things that do not in essence, and by essence I mean in the mind of the people involved, already exist.
Prior to Mr.Big, I had learned in eight years of dating, that if you feel uncomfortable with someone, nothing is going to change that.
You can make things as pleasant as possible, and create harmony.
But you can’t create a connection, where there is none.
But what the first half year with Mr.Big taught me, is that it is equally impossible to end something that does exist in the hearts and minds of the people involved.
In short; All you ever do is work with what is there.
Since I put a lot of work in all my relationships, I know that all I have to do to end it, is to withdraw my love, my presence.
It is not a passive aggressive thing, it is more that you stop watering the plants when the roots are no longer healthy.
You make a choice at an early stage that you’re not going to make things run smooth at surface level, when on a deeper level something died.
Or, in my case; shifted.
Because this is not a breakup post.
I m still in love with Mr.Big, just as much as I was on the first day I met him. My feelings for him are not a dying plant, far from that.
And I have not forgotten the lessons from the first half year, that it is pointless to try to “get” the correct relationship name, to justify how you feel.
It’s not a game of Pairs where you are looking for matching labels on your heart and your relationship.
And then throw all the cards from the table in frustration if the other refuses to give you the status you desire.
Either IT IS.
Or it isn’t.
If two people love each other, they’ll keep returning to each other. Regardless of their conflict of interest over how the thing should be called.
Neither one of the two will be able to cut ties, because it’s like cutting your own flesh.
You can’t whip someone into committing to you.
But neither can you end a relationship when the other doesn’t do what you want; not when the souls are connected and the roots are alive.
Just look at the six seasons of Sex and the City;
Unless you want to end up dating a series of boys who look good on the outside, but who will never move you the way Mr.Big does?
Don’t leave Mr.Big.
Don’t fool yourself.
Don’t waste time bickering.
It’s all so very simple;
Forget the labels and love what you love!
But having said that, something did shift within my relationship with Mr.Big. And I can’t go on, the way I have done for the past four years.
Going back to the start of our relationship; The reason that it was so full of turmoil the first half year, was because I thought he would leave his wife.
I knew he was in love with me, and I also knew he had plenty of reasons to leave her. They had semi-separated multiple times before I even knew him.
I assumed I was the reason he needed to finally leave her.
But he didn’t, and I started to realize many of the aspects in our relationship, suited me well. And I started identifying as a mistress;
Someone whose sexual identity is based on being monogamous herself, but having a partner who isn’t.
That definition of my sexuality was pretty broad, yet it started to feel constricting. Because I realized it wasn’t that I necessarily liked him having other partners:
I liked NOT HAVING A SAY!
He could have been monogamous, just as long as he made clear that what he did in his own time, was not a topic of conversation. And that he would only share, what he thought was beneficial to our relationship.
I didn’t want to be with a man who felt he needed to bend over backwards in order to be worthy of me. I wanted him to feel worthy, and capable of having a great time with me, without having to flaunt his monogamy as a reason to accept him, and in return probably put up with things much worse.
Like not taking care of me, or not taking responsibility for our time together.
By labeling myself as a mistress I made clear (first of all to myself) what I was getting out of the relationship: quality time with the man I loved.
But the jacket of being a Mistress became too tight.
Because I preferred the status quo, our peaceful 3,5 years, over the turmoil of the first six months – I ignored it.
I ignored that I was clinging onto a label, which I had invented myself, instead of staying in touch with what was alive underneath.
Parallel to me getting increasingly uncomfortable with the mistress label, was something else. Or rather: someone else.
I can feel a presence, who is not me, and it is not his wife.
And I am positive I pick up their energy when they’re together. That I suddenly get sick with worry. I ve had anxiety attacks in particular over the past six months, over other people finding out about him and me.
And people who sympathize with his wife blaming me for everything.
And then things between us would end, he’d quickly choose her and promise to better his life. And I would be left alone, unprotected from hatred and anger, for a situation that had been his responsibility. Not mine.
I would take the fall, and he would save his marriage.
This fear of being discovered came up multiple times, but the past few months I m starting to feel something else. Which makes me think it has been something else for way longer…
I feel he has another lover.
I have no idea how serious this is, but serious enough to make me sick to my stomach at what seems totally random times. Regardless of how in favor I think I am of him not sharing his life with me: it is making me sick.
I can’t go on, not like this.
Not when I m losing the game.
Not because I condemn his ways, I absolutely don’t. I think he’s the most gorgeous, wonderful man I know, and I ve never felt for anyone the way I feel for him.
But after four years of being a secret mistress, I no longer have the energy to fight for this. I m not going to waste my last energy, to restore the status quo of being a secret mistress.
Because apparently – and this is important – whatever forces were at stake that kept our relationship healthy, they have changed.
I would like to say the disruptive force could also come from me. I do recognize that as an option. My feelings for other men for example, can also be jeopardizing what Mr.Big and me have.
But right now I m working with the hypothesis it’s either something between us, or something on his side.
Whenever we’re together, he’s just as wonderful as he always has been. He never sees me, not “even” now, when his heart is not in it. I absolutely can’t blame this on him in the sense that he’s changed or something.
But I m responding to something or someone, I can’t see.
It’s like a food allergy: apparently there’s something in our relationship that gives me stomach ache and diarrhea.
And it can very well be something that has always been there; and that I can suddenly no longer digest. For example, not being chosen. Not having him at my side. Him not sharing his life with me.
Or the allergy can be to something new. And in that case the most likely explanation is that someone new has entered our triangle, whose presence I can sense.
And in both cases the mistress label is not serving me anymore. The label, our story, this blog and my writing, are ALL preventing me (and probably Mr.Big too!) to see what’s here.
We’ve lost connection to what we were, to how we started out.
I need to stop seeing myself as a mistress, put down my pen, and quit defining “us” but especially quit defining “me”.
And instead I need to sit still and simply observe what happens after I have ceased to tell the comforting stories that have held all the pieces together for such a long time.
The label mistress has served me well.
But I ve lost touch with that woman who after eight years of dating, finally fell in love with a great guy. Someone she didn’t have to “work” for, to make things happen.
Someone who understood her, and she him.
I need to know if that story is still there. And if not, what is the other story, that Life wants to share with me?
After twelve years I’m done telling stories and I m going live my life.
Instead of writing one myself.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

I quit writing

Like a Prayer is the forty-ninth and final chapter from Project M. 
It is also my final blog post for an indefinite period of time.

I ve been writing, pretty much non-stop, since 2006, the moment I became single. And although it has brought me many things – in particular the opportunity to have relationships that are way out of my league – it has now started to constrict me.
The cage I built to protect myself, has become a prison.
I need to start living, and start experiencing life, without the pen.
Or at least without diary writing/ blogging about my real life.

I m going to use this time to create my four new books.

One Dutch book with columns:
Blote Kont
Verhalen over mannen, macht en dagjes uit

One English book with columns:
I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW

One English book about Mistresshood:
The Big Mistress

And one diary 2017-2018, called Reboot.
Which will also include the diary you just read, Project M.

I thank you very much for reading my work.
This blog will be resumed, whenever the mood strikes and I have something interesting to say, although my diary writing days are behind me.
Seeing each other will probably be on YouTube! where I ll be checking in multiple times each week.
So I hope you subscribe. 

The best places to follow me are:
This blog – subscribe button on this page, most likely on the right.
Facebook
and Twitter

NEW connect on Linkedin

BOOK SHOP
Gives a 25% discount on all prices
If you check your cart, you can select your store
f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.