Category: The Day After

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Super motivation loading
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

Love, Sex and Content Creation | Part 2: Literally Me

“But what if Ryan Gosling IS Source?”
coach Sara Saltee, on our call

It was almost the first thing that came up, after I had apologized for eating a pizza on our call, which was definitely the biggest breach of courtesy ever since I had the call in bikini in 2019 because it was just too freakin’ hot..
Of course, Sara did not mind the pizza anymore than she had minded seeing my midrif, but when I invited her to just fill the first 15 minutes with whatever she wanted to talk about, she said:
“Well, what were you hoping to discuss today?”
As if she understood I wanted something specific, because she knew the general gist of it since she had received my letter Super motivation loading beforehand.
About me being so incredibly inspired because I had spotted an incredibly hot man.

“Well, I’m worried that I may reincarnate because of all the men. I want this to be my last reincarnation.
But what if I don’t become one with Source, because I’m in love with Ryan Gosling?” 

At which she replied:
“But what if Ryan Gosling IS Source?”
Which, admittedly, is a tempting thought.
I remember in the 90s, how Brad Pitt playing Death also brought me great consolation. Somehow, it clicked.

Whether it was from having this discussion with her, or from eating my favorite pizza, after ten minutes I felt so much better.

And realized that I don’t really believe in purity or goodness paradigms. In fact I think they’re inherently suspicious, because the unspoken social rules and how society operates are full of them.
It will take generations, before we have dismantled the power structures of patriarchy, but what we can do today is discard the idea of wants, needs and desires being either good or bad.
To think I would have to reincarnate because I did such a carnal thing as lusting after a man, or such an immature thing as falling in love.

And there is such a thing called Bhakti Yoga;
Where your romantic love is your path to heaven, but I heard even that tends to be discredited in the afterlife, and you really have to stand your ground for your unconditional love and devotion to fully count.
I imagine this goes even more if you have never seen them in real life, but do know what jacket the Beloved wore in Drive;
Can make an in-promptu “ending explained” video to Bladerunner 2049;
And have the vocabulary to explain how well Ryan Gosling’s Dirty Dancing move worked in Crazy Stupid Love.

But even with a normal love interest, you really have to stand your ground, to make your Bhakti efforts count for something in the afterlife.

So maybe because of these stories about the Bhakti practitioners taking somewhat of a reincarnation risk with their choice of holy path, or because of patriarchy still poisoning my brain with what is good or bad for me to love;
I had started doubting myself.

Even when I’ve known since puberty that men, or boys as they were then, and sexuality, as a very private very wonderful thing between two people, were clearly the most important things in life.
I could appreciate the rest as well, there have been many relationships that were important to me, but the most exciting ones were without a doubt romantic love.

Until it was 2026, and I suddenly thought:
“Oh no! What if Ryan Gosling means I have to reincarnate!!”

One pizza and one call with Sara later, I no longer thought that.

But there’s another factor;
I think it’s just so important to do things in life that you cannot do in death.

Because after death there is a reasonable chance you can still do something that resembles meditation, or contemplation or being mindful.
And not a high chance you can have sex, or fall in love, or just be human and make a mess of things!
What a wonderful earthbound privilege!

Pretty good reason to prioritize the latter, and take the whole idea of being good or spiritual with a grain of salt.

And the final reason I stopped feeling guilty about being so inspired by men and by idols, and by falling in love and prioritizing pleasure, is because Sara reminded me of something I said years ago.
About the crushes, the sex, the pleasure, and the creativity, all wrapped into one.

I had told her:
“Sara, I want a life worth writing about.”

Because that, is a life worth living.

~Lauren
An unexamined life -> without R.G. <- is not worth living

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Super motivation loading
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

Love, Sex and Content Creation

Past relationships.
New beaus.
Idols from my teenage years and later decades.

And from writing erotic diaries as Lauren Harteveld, to being visible under another name and spending 99% of my time there, sometimes forgetting Lauren the lover even exists.

I’m gonna need all for this story and will probably do an incredibly poor job being clear here.
So beware!

But even with the mess I’m about to create here, nothing can take away from the fact that it’s exhilarating to finally understand something that has been brewing for years.
The unsettling feeling that somewhere along the way, something changed and I missed it. And now I know what;
Online visibility, changes your relationships. 

Call it “Fame” instead of “Online visibility”, and it’s something we have known for a very long time.
Fame, changes your relationships.

And if it comes to online professionals, influencers or content creators with a large online following, it is quit easy to translate that wisdom to the current age.
But I’m not one of those obvious modern-day celebrities, so I never considered the whole thing of my online content important or even significant, in daily life.

Except I now realize that it has changed me, because it alters what I have left to give. But also, what I am prepared to give.

Much like a regularly famous person, I try to pretend it doesn’t matter. Except I now know that in many ways, it does matter.
A lot.

Because “we” have already given everything through our work.
That’s where we have showed you who we are, and created something for you.
But also, that’s where we took the lead in what’s invested here.

Which is why famous people will often date other famous people, although I know this is all such a tender topic.
But I really do think celebrity coupling is not just about them meeting each other at parties or even about trust.
(More about trust in the final paragraphs which are also about sex)
(Yes, you’re welcome to skip)

The reason celebrities seem to prefer each other’s company could partially be because the other celebrity has already delivered.
They know there are interviews they can read, movies they can watch, albums they can listen to.
Which is significant, even when they choose not to!

Just knowing somebody’s work is something you understand, something made for I would say “The Consumer Market”, and that their work is something you could engage with even when you are not going to because you want to keep the relationship pure;
There is still a difference, to dating someone who does not have that kind of work.
And this is by no means judgement of any kind.

It’s just easier to connect with someone whose work is out there, versus someone who works within a certain system, who works with classified information, or in a field you do not relate to.

The contribution in the form of art, and with that the contribution to the connection, has already been made.
And it started building years or decades before you knew them.

It is this contribution that has drawn me to celebrities forever.
Because that work? It was already enough.

There’s this idea that fans want to have a special relationship with their idol, but I think you could also say that fans realize the relationship is already complete.
That their personal interaction with the material is what makes it reciprocal;
Not more attention from the one who created it.

Going back to my realization I can see two things.

First, that I’m ready to acknowledge that if I would have a famous or visible partner, they’ve already put in the work.
I’ve always felt this instinctively, but now I can put words to it.

It is such a gift to be able to enjoy someone’s performance or art, or content.
It’s like what they say of reading someone’s book: You’re in their head.
Yes, they’re making this connection to everybody, and it is not personally made for you.
But that does not take away from it being a major contribution to the relationship the two of you will have.

And this does not mean this is the only contribution or connection, absolutely not! There is of course a big difference between a fan and idol/ creator relationship (which is just about the work), and having a personal relationship.
But what I’m saying is: It counts. Or it should count. And it should count as something big!

And the second realization is that this dynamic is what I have felt happening for myself, having been a writer for a really long time.
It was work I put in, that was influencing what was happening between us.

Now everyone I’ve been with enjoyed my writing and was supportive of it, so it’s not like we had to pretend it didn’t exist. 
But I’m ready for more.
I’m ready to acknowledge my own online work as a pretty solid contribution to a relationship. And I’m no longer going to buy into a narrative that the hours at my desk are somehow jeopardizing my personal and in particular my intimate relationships;
They are creating it.

Which brings me to the final topic, on sex, and how it ties into the aspect of fame and visibility as well;
I’m not too keen on having sex nowadays, it’s not private, not safe.

I’m not even talking about sexual abuse or a man betraying my trust and things ending up online because he shared them.
It’s a real risk, but it is not the immobilizing sexual risk I am talking about.

No, what I mean is that I think we are living in the worst era, and no longer have any privacy.
People filming you in public, unregulated Meta glasses, and bugged hotel rooms with cameras live streaming if you have sex there.
Sex, texts, or the conversations you have;
They can all end up online by third party intervention.
Not shared or leaked by your partner.

I’ve definitely been taking precautions, but they’re not water tight, and I should probably do better.
Either that, or I decide that I’m going to cancel sex or marginalize or minimalize it to something that is not interesting to share.
But I’ve thought about it, and I’ve thought about it a lot. Versus my potential partners, who are heterosexual men who have not grown up feeling like prey, their bodies scrutinized, and that appearing in public means you owe people being beautiful and your attention, simply because they can see you.
They don’t know about all that.

Heterosexual men, which is to say my potential partners, don’t know what it’s like if people film you without your consent and you have no idea what they’re going to do with it.
Or how much is already out there.

They can’t know;
Unless they’re famous.

Then they’d know exactly what my worry is.
And they would have it handled.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Sigma Birthday
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

There she f* is | Part 2: Death & Sexus

DESPERATELY SEEKING  SUSAN
Keep the faith. Tuesday 10 a.m. 
Battery Park. Gangway 1.
Love Jim

Once upon a time I was aware that all my interests stemmed from only two sources; Madonna or Men.
“Men” not as in 50% of world population, but as in love interests, writers and other idols.
And Madonna not as in the Virgin Mary, although admittedly her sacred nature will soon become relevant to this story, but Madonna as in the queen of pop who has inspired me for intense time periods after which, similarly to my relationship to men, the connection slowly fizzled out but never completely died.

Even when I think I’m over them, years later, the affection has a way to suddenly flare up.
Off to the races. But although my love for Madonna has recently been slowly on the rise, it’s nowhere near what it used to be, in the late 2010s.
Yet the call with Sara revealed Madonna had never really left.

Because in the call we discussed my new, expansive, borderline religious dedication to my own spiritual path. My deep desire to carve out a life, create a clarity, a rhythm, a space of devotion. To be the vessel, but also to maintain it.
And before we knew it, we were already knee-deep into discussing Broadway actors, who have to go home immediately after the show, protecting tomorrow’s performance by going to bed early.
I too go to bed early, so I can rise when others are still asleep. The early morning are my most important hours of the day.

We were discussing my fascination with the idea of tending to the space surrounding sexuality. The atmosphere. And how that has become its own standalone thing, that has become incredibly fulfilling.
I have a sexual practice, but its not something that has to do with physical pleasure but a mental one. It’s a devotion to beauty, and a refusal to open the door for low-effort or course anything.

I am obsessed with my own literal (night time) dreams, which are still not coming through as clearly as decades ago (before internet on our phones!)
But I can already ask for guidance before I fall asleep, and get actual answers.
I am making peace with being alone, and it’s thrilling.

I binge watch one channeler and a Tarot reader.
Hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of videos, month after month.
My cheeks are flushed in an insatiable hunger.
I wake up at 4 and am on my yoga mat at 5 without an alarm.
I am happy.

And yet, it is only the beginning.
Because when I spoke with Sara I also shared that my conscious effort was going to be in ancient Egyptian spirituality.

In retrospect I was also assuming this meant I had finally become a serious spiritual practitioner, instead of someone who was only here for the falling in love and obsessing over men part. 

I didn’t say it, nor was I looking for approval from Sara that I was finally legit in my spiritual practice, but I was happy that for once things seemed to be solid, congruent, and profound.
Perhaps a bit boring, and it would certainly never amount to anything worth writing about, but still solid, right?
Wrong. 

Soon we were chatting about how I had always had this fascination with erotic space, and sexual atmosphere. And with all the roles women could play, such as mistress, artist, writer, as long as those roles were a hundred thousand miles outside of the orbit of everyday life.
And had nothing to do with caregiving (unless it was to cats or other magical creatures) nor with doing patriarchy’s silent labor.
Roles where you were no longer an accessory to the systems you were born into, and not even a product of your own personal history.
Roles that had left their entire history behind, and were now rooted in freedom.

And for a reason I no longer recall, we started talking about Desperately Seeking Susan, the 1985 Madonna movie, and how Madonna’s Susan was a symbol of that freedom.
We all wanted to be her, sitting on that rail, her back facing the ocean so she could overlook the park, looking out for Jim.
She’s wearing pitchblack sunglasses, and lights a match at the sole of her shoe (those are wax matches, if I recall correctly) and then lights a cigarette taking a sip just as Jim approaches.

She kisses him deeply, immediately wrapping her arms and legs around him.

The past week or so she’s lived with a lover in a hotelroom. Someone who has been found dead but who, as she insists, was breathing when she left.
Technically she does not have a home, and yet she is at home everywhere, enjoying herself with men along the way.
She is free.

Also: She wears a jacket with a pyramid on the back.
Also: She has stolen a pair of earrings from her late lover. As we will find out soon, those are the earrings from Nefertiti.

And that was effectively the moment I could just flush any idea of me having sovereign spiritual ideas down the toilet, because obviously, I wasn’t.
Yes, I was free. Just like I had learned in 1985, from Madonna.
Yes, I no longer belonged to the world, but my early morning hours were Susan’s nomad lifestyle. A rhythm that made us unreachable.

Susan carried a round black suitcase, with white skulls printed onto it.
It was her mobile altar. She wore rhinestone boots that had been on display like a religious artifact. Because they were.
I got up from my desk and came back showing Sara my current vision board cards;
One card had Susan’s skull suitecase on it.
One her rhinestone boots.
I had actively bound myself to this movie, to this Madonna, months ago, and yet had managed to miss that I was recreating the lifestyle, including an obsession with ancient Egypt.

So in many ways, I am back to where I always was.
Everything real about me is either inspired by Madonna, or by men.
Even the parts you think are about ancient Egypt.

But I am finally, and by all standards, free..

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Sigma Birthday
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

There she f* is

In the weeks leading up to the call there was a lot of bad stuff to unpack, but since the call I’m facing a different “problem” because things just kept unfolding.
In a positive way, like a puzzle automatically falling into place.

The pieces were falling in line with my daily routines, glued themselves onto my identity, and before I knew it there was this whole new being to admire where a pretty bland, work-in-progress part of my life and identity used to be.

She was wearing black and sporting a pair of horns, and I credit binge watching a ton of Capricorn videos for her spectacular appearance on a Monday morning.

Now before I dive in about who she is, and why I’m so happy to see her, I have to cut back a bit to how my horoscope looks.

My horoscope has four different points of gravity, four different signs that are extremely significant.
All in a different element; One fire, one air, one earth and one water.

The four points of gravity are four different houses.
A house is 1/12 of a circle representing the sky.
A house is visualized as 1/12 piece of a pie, and it carries one of the 12 zodiac signs.
So in telling this story, what I am referring to is four of the 12 houses in my birth chart carrying 99% of the weight in the form of planet placements and important points in the sky.
A full circle with eight almost empty houses, 8 empty pieces of the pie.
And then four houses spread over the zodiac, all marked by a zodiacal sign.
All four host to planets and important astrological points.

Two houses/signs are squaring each other, this means they don’t go together.
If I was two people, an astrologer would say about dating the sign of that other part of me;
“I see some challenges here.”
But it’s not another person, it’s not an optional thing. It’s two parts of me, at odds.

On the bright side, squared signs are always the same modality* (* not sure if modality is the right word);
Both signs Fixed, both Mutable or both Cardinal signs.
So they may bud heads, but squared signs are by definition in a way of equal strength. They fight the same way.
Like similar Pokémon cards. I think, because I don’t play Pokémon, but you get the idea.

So there is that, two parts of my charts going head to head and neither one budging.
But this is not nearly as complicated as the relationship the three other houses have.

Now in case you counted, you will probably see that one sign is both in a square standoff with another sign, as well part of my Triangle of Chaos.
And this is true.
But it is the sign with the most planets in it, and it doesn’t show any sign of fatigue. They have it handled.

So the Triangle of Chaos: These three signs are all important (being 3 of the 4 points of gravity, as established).
They don’t share an element, because they’re Earth, Fire and Air.
And they don’t share their modality* (* not sure if modality is the right word), because one is fixed, one is cardinal and one is mutual.
If I was playing the game Set!, which as opposed to Pokémon I do know how to play, well then these three signs would be a Set.
Because they are different on all identifiable characteristics.

One of them, one of the three signs in the Triangle of Chaos, is Capricorn.
And this morning, sparked by a video on my feed, I was inspired to study her again. From all the four signs/points gravity in my chart, I pay the least attention to Capricorn.
A Capricorn is hardworking and built for harsh conditions. She doesn’t care not being noticed, as long as I don’t bother her with stuff or include her in frivolous activities, she’s perfectly fine with me obsessing, drooling and self-indulging over the other three signs.
It’s all Whatever to her.

But today I started studying her, and made a playlist from all Capricorn videos from my favorite astrologer. Shorts, reels, longer form content, some dating back years.
And I fell in love with her, because something in me just broke open and a whole flood of emotions came out, making the most unwelcome gift to my neglected Capricorn-self because Capricorns like to keep things clean and functional.

I saw the Capricorn woman shaking her horns, but allowing the other three signs in me their little moment.
Not because she felt akin to them, but because she figured not saying anything was the best strategy to get this moment of oversharing over the soonest.

I was happy to have such a clear image of the Capricorn side of me, that feisty horned woman, because I knew the “face”, the archetype, of the other three, but Capricorn had always been a little vague to me.
And then later today, the final piece of the puzzle fell!!
And guess what?
My Triangle of Chaos, is not chaos at all!

She, Capricorn me, was actually in all three of them.
She, has been the one holding the chart together all along.

First the place where she was most obvious; The house that had some mighty inhabitants, and that was in her sign of Capricorn.
This was of course, where I had located “Her” first.

But I could now see, that the other two points in my Triangle of Chaos were also under her command.
Because another one was the 10th House, which is the House of Capricorn because Capricorn is the tenth sign of the zodiac.
Any placements in your 10th house are automatically linked to the sign of Capricorn.
Connected to your own little beastie, to quote quite appropriately Maleficent.

And then the third and final point of this triangle was not in the sign of Capricorn, nor was it the House of Capricorn, but it had Saturn there;
The planet that rules Capricorn.
Meaning that what had looked like a triangle of chaos, were three strong houses spread over the sky and they were all connected through one sign;
The sign of Capricorn.

By being present in all three of these houses, Capricorn had never been a side-note to my chart. Never a nice to have aspect to feed everything to I do not want to do, from herculean works to mundane tasks.
She was the one underneath it all, carrying the whole chart. 

And she totally digs the lady of that first house I talked about.
Remember the one? 
The one who was in a staring contest, in a square, a power battle.
I didn’t name her, but that was Scorpio.

My chart is not a battlefield, it is not pulled into four different directions as I understood it in the past. I am not four different women.
I am only two.

One Scorpio, who rules the night, the depths, and all the worlds of the unseen.
And one Capricorn.

Who rules, in my case, everything else.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
The Sweetest Life
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

The Nature of Reality

Our call was so abstract and complex, I already knew it would be impossible to come up with a catchy title, and still cover its essence. (and not be empty clickbait)

So to compensate for its lack of juicy content, I will try to keep it short, and therefor sweet.
And who knows!
Maybe these findings are the missing keys to your life, and you’ll find them fascinating and just what you need to turn everything around for the better.

To understand the conclusion, I first need to draw a picture of the impossible task I present Sara with, every time we start a call.
Which is that I barge into it, Kramer from Seinfield- style, and open with an unfinished but for some reason incredibly important-to-me model of reality, that I drop on our proverbial table.
My energy says: “Look Sara! Don’t mind the mess, I know there’s something brilliant in there somewhere, but I’m stuck.”
And then, without missing a beat, I take her deep into the rabbit-hole of some sort of highly abstract model of reality, that would explain my most pressing problem, if only I could find the final missing piece.

I often have moments when I fear she’ll one day say she’s tired of coaching me, because it is just too much. And she would be right.
But to me, her coachee, it is so welcome to have that one time every month, and that one person, with whom I can share these new inventions without holding back.

And low and behold! We always finish them.

Having an extra pair of eyes to assess what it is we’re really looking at, always turns out to be extremely helpful.

Maybe you too are someone for whom the solution lies with understanding how things came to be a certain way in the first place.
Someone who does not need, nor want, nor is in any way helped by, a conversation about how it makes you feel, but should instead wonder things like:
– How did I get here?
– Why is this in my life?
– Is it part of the larger constructs or contexts I have agreed to, or is it an intruder?

For example – and I really mean just any random example because this is not judgement but just the first thing that pops to mind – a preventative screening for diseases can cause a lot of complicated situations.

But if you had beforehand made a decision at a more abstract level that you personally believe in and endorse preventative screening, and that it is part of your life, then you can act much calmer if something shows up, because you’ve done the groundwork.
Whereas if you’re in the midst of medical unrest, it may be because you never bothered to make the principal decision if you want to even engage with that part of (preventative) medicine.

Very often we find ourselves in difficult situations that actually have multiple causes or are composed out of multiple layers.
Some of them could have been smoothed out, and dealt with, as if they were a separate chapter. Because they are.

Abstract problem solving, and abstract living according to your own values, makes life far less chaotic, stressed, and like you’re at the mercy of other people’s ideas and interventions.
It enables you to make conscious decisions, and push your own agenda.

For me personally, pulling a problem apart into its components has proven to be the only real way to solve it. And some have taken me decades, but now that I know what I’m doing, and also have Sara to look over my shoulder, the process has sped up for sure.
And new problems actually excite me, because they’re like a puzzle.

With the medical stuff I mentioned, my decision is to reject screening, but I would have been equally happy if I had decided to be pro-screening, and might have gotten more screenings than Dutch government offers for free.
So the secret is not in the choice itself but in the fact that I’ve made a conscious choice to begin with.
And these are choices at an abstract level, before you take it down to execution level.

But the catch is that most problems and situations are not singular, but have many moving parts!
Which means that before you can make a decision or understand why something did not or does not work, you need to develop a working model of reality.

You have to come up with an abstraction of your problem;
Only then, can you make this decision or understand what to change for better results.
And making new models takes a lot of times. And, in my case, a lot of calls with Sara.

“My only task is to help someone to keep on going,” Sara said.
She wasn’t looking for the satisfaction of providing magical quick fixes or in being able to claim miracle results thanks to her amazing coaching skills.

If what I needed to keep going were meta conversations, centered around a pile of unfinished ideas;
Then she was happy to help.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Recently, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
An Armed Mission
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

The Friend Zone

The big takeaway of my session with Sara was clear to me;
It was about friendship being the cornerstone to everything, and to a far bigger extent than I could phantom.
But I did check my notes on how I was going to call this post, because I knew I had come up with a title but didn’t remember it.
And I had to reread the notes to compose the full story.

It took me several hours to deduct the main conclusion, which was why I am so terribly picky with friendships.

The previous blogpost had been about protecting what I (no doubt overdramatically) had called “My Mission”.
It established that the biggest threat came from the mission one day collapsing under the weight of a love relationship.
You know, those first few months where you give up your entire life to be with one another every waking minute?
Yeah…. that can never happen again.

But the conversation with Sara proved the line of defense was not so close to home, or to my bed, but was actually further out.
It was in my friendships, and it had been there for a couple of years.

Now none of this was new information.
I’ve realized for a long time what I want my friendships to be like;
Fun, clear and without any emotional labor performed by either one of us.

I want a dating-like structure where we only see each other if we want a good time, and a lover is also a friend, but one with whom a good time can also mean something sexual.

Like I said, none of this is new. After a long and dangerous ride on the friendship struggle bus, I now know how to drive it.
My friendship formula is ingrained to me, and I am fully comfortable with it. As I am with my love life as well; This is handled, it’s encoded. The work is done. 

So it might look like the conversation with Sara did not come up with any new things, but that was not true. Because I learned, or suddenly saw WHY, I have been so hardcore on getting this right.
Why I insisted on friendships being that way, and I’ve already given it away, so maybe you noticed!
Because it was of course the exact same reason as with lovers.
To protect the core, the mission, my art, my creativity.

Again, I have been this way with friendships for years, and I’ve been that way with lovers even longer.
And yet everything changed because I now understand WHY.

Because my life is centered in creativity.
My art is at the core, you could call it a mission.
But regardless of what you call it, I’m not risking its destiny.

I am here for it.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Last week, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
A Safe Place for Her
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

Games are fun (and divine)

A question that was never answered in a satisfying manner, finally got its definite answer.
The question was why I feel disappointment instead of happiness, the moment a man starts declaring me his love or, alternatively, when he tries to get a reassurance out of me that I like him.
It feels like the whole point of our connection is being undone, the moment it happens. Like we can just break the whole thing off right there and then, because we can’t go anywhere from here.

That secret was solved this week.
And I will get more into it later on, although you may also be able to guess the  Why This Is, based on the title.

However, before I get into solving the riddle I have to preface this by saying that the heaviest lifting around this topic was not done in this session with Sara, but by an astrologer I consulted.
Initially, I even thought the best place for this reveal would be my other series, In the stars (where I talk about men).

But this post is not “about men” (it’s about me!), and it’s not about men’s sun signs either. It’s about the two planets Venus and Saturn in my natal chart.
So that’s why, even though the following discovery was made by the astrologer, I am discussing it here in this series The Day After, in the aftermath of Sara’s coaching session.

First something that came to table the moment Sara asked me what had struck me most from having this astrology reading.
And I don’t mean to turn this into an unpopularity contest against myself, but what popped to mind first is definitely just as unsympathetic as saying out loud I do not respond well to a man wanting to connect over their insecurities.
And that is that I need a man out there, doing things, playing ball, being in the mix, nailing life!
In other words: I need him powerful.
And I know terms like that are not helpful in any way, least of all in dismantaling patriarchy. But the astrology reading did bring me to this point of getting a better understanding why I have that unpopular preference.

You see, the astrologer is someone who is very visible.
And although visibility was not a topic in our conversation, I did feel seen in a strange way. As if for one brief moment my own burdens with regard to visibility, were shared or understood.
I told Sara that if I could have it my way, and I’d draw up a wish list of what I want in a lover, I would choose for him to be visible.

Visibility and creative expression are of course not the only way to be in your power. And, as my former lover Mr Big proved, I am susceptible to other forms of it as well.
But still, it was great to see one form surfacing so very specifically:
“I like a lover to be visible.”
That’s almost actionable, it’s a very concrete thing to look for.

And then I told Sara another thing about the astrology session, and that was about the old secret finally solved. The riddle why I react so strongly, if a man wants to discuss his feelings with me. Regardless if how I handle it is good enough (which I think it is), I am disappointed.

It is because my Venus is in the sign of Gemini.
That is why I want my love life to be fun and games.

So according to the astrologer, the “problem” with my Venus wasn’t so much her placement in the shadows of Dark Lord Saturn – which I thought wasn’t a healthy environment for her – but the fact that she was in this very fun loving sign of Gemini.
Since most partners will expect some form of commitment in their love life, or some structure or financial merger, being all about the play will lead to misunderstandings.

My Gemini Venus has been playing an entirely different dating game, all along. Where the prize is not that you are my man, but the prize is the game itself.
Every time someone new enters my life, I expect them to be excited that we’re going to play.
And to me – as well as to them I presume!!! – this game is largely independent of how attractive I find him.
The game itself comes with its own chemistry and when someone refuses to play – and regardless of if I’m in love with him – everything falls flat.

What has been angering me in my communication with men, from when I was just an early teen and it were still boys, is that my invitation to play gets misread for an audition to whether he is good enough or attractive enough to be boyfriend material.
When those things are largely irrelevant to me.
So to interpret flirting, and having a good time TOGETHER, or even just getting to know one another a little bit, and then deciding to go for coffee;
To interpret that as something temporarily inconvenient and stressful to hurry through as soon as possible in order to settle into a normal relationship?
That means we might as well break it off immediately, because there’s no coming back from this.

My game of love requires a man who can hold that tension, knows how to move his pieces across the board, but who also gives me time to process his move and waits until I make mine.
Again, there’s that tension again, that he must be able to hold.
And I his.

There is a profound underlying trust with the men with whom I do play that game.

“I told the astrologer about Mr. Big,” I said to Sara, referring to the games I played very openly with my longterm lover who left a few years ago.
In the first half year of our affair I would even give points out loud, and declare who won after every date.
“The astrologer was little shocked by the fact that the one with the least emotional damage would win.”

I didn’t try to convince the astrologer my games had not been cruel.
All I remembered was that to me those games had been absolutely invigorating, compared to the men that had needed reassurance, clarity, or emotional support.
And the game had also given me a way to frame it, when I had been hurt by him not calling afterwards, or not being able to sleep or process it.
I could refer to it a next time and say: “You won that one.”
Or kissing him goodbye in high spirits saying:
“I win tonight. Because I kept my pants on.”

“I know it looks cruel,” I said to Sara. “But it was so good. And only he could play at that level.”

And suddenly it all fell into place.

What to do with my lighthearted Venus, in the shadow of stern Saturn.
Why I like powerful men.
And even why I wrote Sara the letter A Safe Place for Her discussing how to make room for the lover-me, the Lauren-me.

Because Sara and me had inadvertently discovered who the “Her” from the title was. She was not just Lauren the lover, but in fact the misunderstood Goddess Venus in Gemini. Who had been so eager and excited to play, every time a new suitor came.
Only to be heavily disappointed every time they had not been up for it.

She was now beginning to suspect they had mistaken her for her neighbor Saturn.
Ruler over structure, earthly responsibilities and karmic duties.

She was not on very good terms with her neighbor, as she found him boring and he was killing her whole vibe.
And her suitors angered her by ringing her doorbell, when judging from what they expected to find, they had actually been looking for Saturnian reassurance.
Not divine play.

To Venus, there could never be something like happily ever after.
There was only the game, and it was one few wanted to play.
But she did understand now why she wanted her men powerful. Or what she had meant by it, and that it had little if anything to do with material wealth.
And everything with him being a strong player.
Her/my demand for strong men, only meant strong enough to play the game.

And she also understood why people would think of her as cruel, because indeed, she had played hardball.
But this had not been entirely her own choice, she could see that now. 

With Saturn as your neighbor, you have to become more serious, more structured, and more vigilant with your boundaries.
You have to defend what’s yours, or he will takeover.

Saturn may not have been the easiest neighbor for Venus, destined to be together in the sign of Gemini.
But she could see how his intimidating presence had actually helped her:
She, my Venus in Gemini, had become a stronger player.

Still playful, still fun, still non-committal at least in a traditional sense.
But powerful none the less.

My desire for a strong man, someone who plays, is not about preference, ego or some glamorous power-couple fantasy.
It’s an understanding of what needs to be in place before we can move forward. I may even say, before we can safely, move forward.
Because at this point I’m beginning to see, I need to start having consent conversations about what it is I offer, and what I don’t offer.
What can be expected, and what cannot.
And that my commitment is to the game, not to a person.

And that if we do this, he’ll always be able to find me on the field, whether it’s been a week, or whether it’s been a decade.
Because this game does not have a beginning, and it does not have an end.

Let’s play.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Last month, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was:
Angel Love
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

 

A Life of Agency

The biggest takeaway from our call was a sad one;
I will never belong in society ever again.
This conclusion is contradictory to an earlier conclusion that I never belonged to begin with, so I don’t know why this keeps coming up.
How can I mourn something, or hope for something, that I already established as not having existed?

In hindsight, the natural belonging in the way I have moved and lived, pretty much effortlessly, my whole life, were merely situationships.
The result of proximity which was provided through the structures of education, work, or family structures.
None of it was real.

And I must never forget that all my current, very much hailed and beloved relationships, are at heart not real either.
There is something in the system, that will never allow them to be.
Every day we have in friendship, in love or in harmony or genuine connection is created with our own bare hands, and therefor ultimately unsustainable.

The system will always win.

A few years ago, I consciously detached from my friends and family. A move that was not dramatic and has only made all of my relationships better, for sure.

I knew “detaching” was not the right word at the time.
Because I was merely making my peace with something that already was. Or wasn’t.

But I didn’t know what I was fighting. Not what was really at play. I knew they were not bad people undeserving of my love or anything.
But I did know that the best thing I could do for all of us, was to emotionally remove myself from all relationships.
And I did.

The call with Sara was where I discovered the no-longer-taking-this-personal reason they are not real. Or at least not according to my standards.
My thoughts on this undermining system, underpinning our whole lives, are completely new!
I’m gonna give myself credit for making all those moves of assessment and detachment, basically in the dark.

As a sort of in-between side-thought, I can now also see why I (like most people?) am so disappointed in love;
Because I expected those relationships to be real.
They were not, and for the same soon-to-be-disclosed, not-taking-it-personal reason.

Isn’t that idiotic? Why on earth would we expect to have fulfilling deeply satisfying love relationships if our other relationships are effectively devoid of deep, immutable meaning?
How would we even be able to attend to such a rare natural phenomenon as a true relationship, if we fake all the other ones?
Or put in a friendlier way:

If society does not allow for our relationships to be real, and demands us roleplaying, then why would our love relationship be an exception?

The system I am talking about, and which prohibits us from real connection, is of course capitalism, which is the concept that only part of the work needed for a healthy society is rewarded with money, yet money is necessary to live for everybody including those who would choose to, or are forced to, do the unpaid or underpaid labor.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Last month, I had a call with my creativity coach Sara
The email sent before our call was: Marble Track of Love
This new series “The Day After” is written in its aftermath.

 

Master of The Field

The biggest takeaway from our call was more finetuning around why my friendships with women have been so prone to difficulty, compared to my male friends with whom friendships are fairly uncomplicated.
Huge disclaimer!
This is taking into account 2000 years of male privilege to the best of my ability.
Which by definition, will never be enough.

You cannot expect the gender that did not even have voting rights until the 20th century, and their father or husband having to sign for their creditcard just a few decades ago, to be at the same level of Let’s Lay Back And Have An Existential Discussion About The Nature Of The Universe.
That’s privilege.
That’s not having to constantly be on the lookout for predators.
That’s not having your body policed, nor your morals scrutinized. That’s you just letting it hang and having another beer because you have been safe your whole life, because patriarchy has been doing the heavy lifting for you.

I try to take that into account when writing this, and at the same time I know it will never be enough. There is a privilege and a safety gap between my female friends and my male friends, that cannot be overstated.

So there’s all that, and at the same time I’m still not skilled at adjusting my expectations to this. I’m pretty far with raising the bar for potential lovers, meaning that just being a man or even a man I’m in love with, will never be enough for a relationship – real effort needs to be made – but I’m not being supportive towards my female friends, to the level that I would want.
I feel we’re still mostly on our own, battling the consequence of being a woman.

Over the last few years, I’ve said goodbye to all who I could not be a friends with. So the ones who are still my friend, have really come forth and I to them.
For lack of a less dramatic way to put it, we chose each other.
I don’t want to f* it up.
And yet, I find myself still being frustrated that it’s not going as smoothly as with men. 

So that was the first takeaway, that my friendships with women will always stay a work-in-progress. From my side and theirs. And that cognitively understanding where the difference between men and women stems from, has done too little in dealing with my expectations.
I really want to be a better friend to them.

But the second takeaway came from dissecting these so-very-hailed relationships with men. Because initially I thought, and I feel almost silly and definitely self-centered thinking this, I thought they all protected me like knights in shining armor, right.
That because of our difference in gender, they shielded me from harm. And I felt that. And it was a safety no female friend has ever given me.
But I was wrong;
They are not shielding me,  that’s not what they’re doing. Occasionally they might, for sure, but that’s not the foundational safety I feel.
What makes me feel safe, is that they’re shielding, protecting, and walling off, themselves.

It are their own impeccable boundaries, that make me feel safe. 
The exact same boundaries we only accept from men, although fortunately more and more women do adopt them.

An example sprung to mind about a business women I overheard having a conversation on the train. It was a call to the company where she worked, and it was about a visit to a client.
She was discreet and disclosed no information, but it was clear she wanted to report and go home, so she didn’t have to remember anything and could start fresh tomorrow.

The conversation was about projects that cost tens of millions of euros, and which option the client had chosen.

The person on the other end received the information and their way of rounding off the conversation must have suggested that they would pick up the topic tomorrow, at which the business women intervened.
“I just told you,” she said. Repeating the option the client had chosen, identified by the number of millions the deal would be.
She did not hang up the phone until the person on the other end understood  perfectly well that this 5 minute phone call from the train was all she was going to spend discussing a deal of millions of euros.
Impeccable boundaries.

In the call with Sara, this example came up and I started realizing that what makes me feel safe but also (strangely) seen, is when they create that safety for themselves. And they see themselves. I feel taken seriously, when they take themselves seriously. It’s a strange and in a way pretty f*-ed up projection (because on territory that is clearly none of my business), but that’s how it works.

The basics of my flawless friendships was not in them treating me right;
It was in them treating themselves right.

After this I chose to zoom in even further, to the men who had been my lovers, and this new era of my life, where I know I will never get the affairs or flings or relationships I once had. My boundaries are now up to the level of spending 5 minutes on 8 figure deals, if there would be an equivalent for that in love.
Nothing that happened in my love life, ever, would have happened under my New Law. Yet my history provides interesting examples of feeling completely safe and taken care of, under circumstances/ with men that provided no acknowledgement and boundaries in the traditional sense.
My most exquisite sexual experiences, were under conditions any woman looking for red flags would have dismissed.

“I really wonder how that worked,” I said to Sara.

The question was answered within the call, but it wasn’t until later that I was able to come up with the right analogy to illustrate it.
This is an analogy of a gym class, also called physical exercise class (PE class).
It answers the question why men who offered none of the traditional signs of commitment, had made me feel safe enough to have sex.

The gym class analogy goes as follows;
Regardless of the type of sports we’d do that class, our field or exercise terrain would always be marked by a set of bright orange pawns.
Very often the teacher would not carry any specific equipment, just the pawns. Sometimes there would already be other materials on the field, such as balls or bats or gloves, but other times it was just the pawns.
Which was not a good sign because then we’d have to do a lot of running and moving around. The more official the game of sports we’d be doing, the less moving around would be required.

But what I’ve realized these lovers did, in situations that would look unsafe or casual on paper, is that they behaved exactly like the PE teacher, with regard to three things.

First, they were confident and in control.
It was clear that they were in charge, first and foremost of themselves.
They had a firm stance, did not fiddle their hands, and showed no signs of insecurity. They made no sudden movements nor were they overly familiar, or talkative. They just held their ground, and let you go through your emotions without much interference.

Second, they were clear about what we were there to do. What the trajectory was, so to speak. They were, again, unmoved by whether you were going to finish or to what base you were gonna go today.
Their job was simply to offer the game, and to make sure everybody played by the rules.

And third, they marked the field. They decided on the boundaries of our playing field, physically, but also time-wise. And if there was more than one game, they were the ones switching it up.
This could be because of several reasons, but it was always their call.

When students withdrew, they would vary how they responded, depending on the student. But they knew exactly what was going on, nothing went unnoticed under their watchful eye.

In the same way, my best lovers placed their pawns at exactly the right spots. They carved with surgical precision, the lines we would never cross.
They told me the rules, but more than that, they embodied them.

It was an invitation to play, a game where no one could really win.
But more importantly;
No one would ever lose.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living