“When in love, have sex. When not in love, don’t.” After twelve years of analyzing her sexual preferences: Lauren realizes it really was that simple! She feels like a new person.
Last night when we picked up the bill, the bartender asked us: “And? Got plans for tonight?” “Going to finish my blogpost,” I answered truthfully. “Will I be in it?” he asked. “Not unless you’re going to have a deep emotional impact on me. Can you do that?” We laughed it off, but it was true though. Yesterday’s blogpost marked the ending of an era where I had called my blog a diary, inspired by real life.
Over the past months I had to alter so many things, that I had lost all emotional involvement with my story. It was as if I had met Brad Pitt in real life because I had become friends with Angelina Jolie;
But in order to protect their identities I had to write about it as if I ran into Ryan Gosling at the supermarket:
It was just stupid.
And what I had not even shared – when explaining my choice to go dark when it came to sharing my personal life – was that there had been a series of events that were simply too FAR OUT to alter in order to write about them.
For example: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt getting back together and asking me to be a bridesmaid on their second wedding. It really was already a life imitates art situation, where the unbelievable had happened.
Altering it, to make it unrecognizable, would make it impossible for me to keep the facts straight for my story! And besides, altering HOW? Everything was still in progress!
I had no idea in which way I could bend the truth, without screwing up the narrative.
So in the end I just decided to see it as a sign, that my life had become to complicated and secretive to keep a diary. It was time to turn inward. Yesterday’s post marked the beginning of the new era, where I would only write about my inner-world and avoid the pitfalls of revealing the identities of the men I slept with, wanted to sleep with, or even worse: Didn’t want to sleep with.
And I also avoided the trap of revealing too much personal information, that wasn’t mine to share. After posting it, I slept like a baby, and today I felt so light and peaceful. The weight of secrecy and the heaviness of being a mistress;
It had all dropped off me. From now on, I was a girl next door, who made love when she was in love. And didn’t if she wasn’t.
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True Blue is the twenty-third chapter from Project M.
tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
After not writing for over a week, Lauren comes up, gasping for air.
But with purpose.
This is not the original version of the blogpost Into the Groove. Which was written in draft on my offline laptop on Saturday September 22, with the intention of doing the editing/cleaning up/ posting bit later.
That always takes so much time!
I thought I could get away with simply writing my posts in draft – and post them later, when I had more time.
And not just for LS Harteveld!
For my yoga site too, I wrote an offline blog post on Sunday.
Yet despite being in favor of the idea of writing offline, both blogposts were a fluke and I was so happy I hadn’t posted them.
For different reasons.
But the fact that it happened two days in a row, to two separate blog posts, written in two different languages and for two different blogs?
That convinced me that offline writing was a waste of time.
That it brought out the worse of my writing capabilities.
The reason I was happy I hadn’t used my yogapost, was because it was just SO ugly! The topic, the revelations, simply everything about it.
I went on a holiday, and I was shook to my core thinking about the ugliness of what I had created. Waiting for me on an offline laptop, in order to be transferred and sent out into the world.
Lucky me, I had an opportunity to pull that back.
The only thought that was even more frightening on this holiday, were the thoughts about the other offline blog post I had written!
The one for this blog, LS Harteveld.
It had been in the style I have been using here for the past couple of months, on Project M. Diary like-posts, inspired by my real life and in particular the men in my life.
But I have altered these “truths” significantly!
Which gives problems of its own (more about that later), but that was not the biggest flaw of Saturday’s post.
Because this particular diary post about the two men I am in love with, had been too close to the truth!
If I had not written a draft offline, but instead had posted it immediately – in one go, like almost all my posts – that thing would have gone online!
Way too close to revealing the identity/identities of the men I am in love with.
The thought made me sick to my stomach.
Not that revealing something that makes you sick to your stomach, is a reason not to do it!
Not at all.
But it should be purposeful. For example:
As of today I will only write for this blog, the one you’re reading now.
And cancel all writing for my yoga blog, which has been the worse place to do soul searching and share myself with the world.
My yogablog has been the pinnacle of risk-free writing.
But here?
I can write everything. Dig deep and expose my soul until its deepest, darkest layers, without everyone from my neighbor to the admin employee from the housing corporation, reading it too.
And I am ready to give all, including the things that make me sick to my stomach. So it’s not that I intend to stay away from the edges, and only write about things that are either in the past, or within my comfort zone.
Far from that.
But the “deleted” post, that was too close to the truth with regard to the identity to the men in my life, didn’t have anything to do with my personal development.
It had to do with unintentionally, revealing identities.
Which brought me to another aspect of my DIARY writing.
After doing this for twelve years I am just done with it.
Not just dealing with the secret mistress/ oh don’t tell anyone, side of keeping a diary.
No. I’m done with ALL of it.
With writing columns about dates or events.
And about friends who may or may not like me writing about it.
I’m even done with positioning myself as a secret mistress.
I know that I’ve advocated for years that being a secret mistress is a sexual preference and one about which I have so much to tell!
Speaking about mistresshood would make women with the same set of sexual preferences as me, very happy.
Women with a love for secrecy, unavailable men, and who are submissive in bed, definitely submissive …yes!
My story about the sexual nature of a mistress would help them.
But even that is something I don’t want to do anymore.
For the past year or so I’ve been convinced that I could increase my impact, if I would clean up my diary-writing-mistress act into something along the lines of:
“Hi! I’m the Good Mistress! I’m here to help!”
Write guides. Make YouTube videos. Sell coaching.
It would even allow me to ditch the diary writing and regain freedom in my personal life. Have privacy.
I would be a professional from now on. Someone who had been the mistress of someone she referred to as Mr.Big, until summer 2018. And after that I took my private life off the radar and only spoke about it past tense.
And only if it was relevant to SERVE.
Bad.
BAD.
B.A.D.
Idea!
The draft horror post- my potential data leak! – confirmed for me;
Yes!
I WAS done trying to rewrite my personal life, changing enough names and locations, professions, situations, so that that NO ONE (not even the men themselves!) could recognize them.
I was done because by altering so much, keeping a diary had lost its charm.
I couldn’t put enough reality in it to make it satisfying for me.
Because it wasn’t a problem for the reader that the second man I was in love with (Christopher) was “played” by Idris Elba because I used Idris Elba photos with those posts.
– originally, because these will be removed at some point – Lauren 2026) –
But it was a problem for me, because that was NOT how he looked.
Nor were Christophers wife and the wife of Mr.Big members of sketchy semi-religious organizations that could harm me.
That was simply a story-line I had setup to describe the risks of repercussions I was exposed to. It was a framework, a story, to cover for any aggression against me if my position as a secret mistress became known. And also the economic losses such as assets, reputation, business.
But the wives of the two men I am in love with are not Scientologists or sectarians, and if they were I wouldn’t know because I never researched them nor do I know them. So in the end two non-posted blog posts, one butt-ugly for my yoga blog and one way-too-revealing one for LS Harteveld – in combination with a few days off and fresh sea air, gave me tremendous value because they gave me HUGE insights!
Here’s the decisions I made after “Draft Post Gate I and II”:
1. I will no longer write for my Dutch blog/ yoga blog
The word Dutch is already key here…
I ve honestly considered quitting my English writing!
Quit all LS Harteveld and instead focus entirely on my Dutch work. Be 100% there, revealing ALL, regardless of the consequences!
But it’s simply not possible.
I would ALWAYS need to write in English somewhere.
But the other reason I m not going to write for my Dutch yoga blog anymore is in fact that the consequences are bigger there:
It’s under my real name.
Therefor, people who have no interest in my work, but just happen to Google my name can also read it.
And I don’t like that.
I m pretty open there, but I reserve the best, most honest parts for this site, for this account. Because my mailman doesn’t read it.
And I could continue writing the simple, barely-scratching -the-surface posts for my yoga blog, but I m simply not interested to keep writing pretty bland and generic coaching posts.
Sure! I ve kept them as interesting as possible.
But they will never be GREAT.
No one will ever read a yoga blog post, written to not set off the even most random person who Googles me, and go;
“Wow! That is so full on!”
Which is why I will never write for my Dutch blog again.
3. I m quitting the diary thing
I m quitting the diary thing, because I m no longer inspired to write about what happens in real life, and make some cool story out of it.
Especially since I have to alter the truth, when it comes to sex and love, to the extend that I m no longer emotionally involved in it.
I need Idris Elba covering for us!
That’s a sign you’ve strayed way too far from the truth.
And events that don’t have anything to do with sex or love?
I ve written MORE than my share about those things. It already filled me an entire bookstore.
Maybe I should say:
I m quitting the diary writing about the outer world,
In favor of writing about my inner world.
Which brings me to quitting the mistress thing;
3. I m quitting the mistress thing
I m quitting because “mistress” is starting to feel like a too tight definition, and a cause I m no longer interested in.
This holiday I was feeling all sorry for myself, that the second man I m in love with is yet another married man. And that if we would hit it off, whether once or in secret, or on an open and more permanent basis;
Everybody would condemn me.
They would ALL treat the entire situation like:
“He was a happily married man, and then she came along, and now it’s all ruined.”
You know what? I m no longer available for that.
I will remove ALL references to me being a mistress, from all my profiles;
When I publish my new book, I will call it diaries or columns.
But never use the word mistress again.
Over the past couple of weeks, in addition to trying to come to terms with being in love with another married man, I also looked for/ considered getting a second lover because I m seeing my lover Mr.Big so little.
And you know what I concluded?
That sex without being crazy in love, means nothing to me.
EVEN if Mr.Big would end things, and I would become single, and therefor have no sex at all?
95% Chance I ll take the no-sex option.
Not the cute guy-great sex.
Not the great guy- fantastic sex.
Not the friend with benefits.
And so on.
I would wait until someone I was in love with wanted to make love to me.
THAT’S IT!
That’s my whole sexuality right there.
Twelve years since I left my longterm relationship in order to find love and get to know myself sexually, and this really is what my entire philosophy on sex is: When in love, have sex. When not in love, don’t. And I m never going to explain, reframe, or apologize for that ever EVER again! Because there’s nothing to apologize for.
And I will curate the work I made during my mistress years.
But none of the posts that have to do with me being a mistress, and explaining or even defending mistresshood, will be included.
I m not going to publish those specific mistress posts in a book, nor create a guide on how to become a mistress or such.
I might even take them down, I don’t know yet.
My work, from now on, will be me writing about my dreams, goals, ideas, wishes, desires. And sure, I ll use stories to spice it up.
But they will only be about things and people and experiences that move me.
I will write about being in love for sure.
And sex.
But no names, no places, no situations, not even fake ones.
It’s all gone.
From now on, it’s just me, and my emotions.
No label.
Into the Groove is the twenty-second chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Although “Start before you’re ready” is one of Lauren’s favorite sayings, she has serious doubts about her double booking as a secret mistress.
Does she really want a second lover?
“Of course he comes into my life right now!”
It took me at least a day to put two and two together after my former lover Salvatore and me hit it off on chat, and arranged our date in a carefree fashion.
I m not too big on writing out affirmations, in order to change my mindset or manifest things. However, I do create entire worlds based on my imagination, and often use a version of my past self (whether real or made up, that is completely irrelevant) to live up to. To BECOME. Usually I’m only interested in becoming her body, or recreating the level of success “she” had or has. And that’s how I was currently using the 2009 version of me! It was a quite a new thing, and I hadn’t written it out in my journal. The vision was still fairly rough. But it felt real all the same. And then, out of the blue, Salvatore sent me a chat, and I replied, and within ten minutes we were completely excited to see each other again and set a date. I thought back about our time together, and vividly remembered not just him, but myself in his house, in his bed, looking at myself in the mirror.. My beautiful thin thighs! My trained yoga body! “Oh wow,” I softly sighed at the thought of that.
“I would give anything to be like that again.” But it took me a day to realize that Salvatore was THE man of 2009! Of course I had manifested him, if I was so focused on recreating 2009. I had the 2009 thighs in my mind for over a week, before he contacted me. When we met we reminisced on old memories, and he remembered vividly how fragile I was. He even used the word “broken”. I said he had been my first time really good sex, without some major drama happening after. He broke up with me, and I was sad for a few weeks. But it was nothing compared to the major emotional breakdowns I had after Great Sex With Great But Totally Unreliable Men. Maybe because Salvatore was not unreliable, maybe that was the big difference. We came to the conclusion that although he had been the one to break it off, he had actually saved us both a lot of heartache.
And I had a spree of short but successful affairs, all within months of us parting. “It was like I owned it,” I told him. “As if you had taught me everything I needed to know.” Salvatore came pretty close to banging his head to the table to express the unfairness of it all. He had gotten the fragile, broken version of me, with whom he had to be very careful and really sweet. He was also the first to be dominant in bed. I think that was the secret ingredient that elevated me to a level where I was suddenly a little Sex Goddess. And those men after him benefited from my newfound joy in sex. Yet if I had been that lighthearted with him, he probably would have married me! No, it wasn’t fair at all. But yet I thought it was very funny.
2009 had been divided into two parts:
The first half belonged to the first years of being single, which were marked by getting my heart broken twice, barely living to tell the tale, and having a lot of trouble getting my love life on the road.
And then came Salvatore and tadaa!
I was healed.
Or at least, doing way better, and I was certainly a lot more “mobile”.
Salvatore had marked the beginning of a new era then, and he could be the beginning of a new era now.
He made this clear in the days after our date: He could be my second lover, if that’s what I desired.
And I knew he was serious because he added:
“I have a lot more to lose than you do.”
But still, I could lose my lover Big.
Either because he didn’t want me anymore.
Or because I became such a mental mess from having two men, that things between us would just turn sour.
But Salvatore could lose his whole family.
So I knew he was right. This made it even more important to have a serious check-in with myself, if I really wanted this.
The stakes were way too high to just wing it, and see how it would go.
And I know it is superboring, and not good for storytelling or writing this blog; but I knew it wasn’t right for me.
And once I knew WHY it wasn’t for me, I realized that this whole idea of getting a second lover, was incomplete and it wasn’t me.
It didn’t reflect what I valued.
You see, the idea to get a second lover was sparked by a combination of two separate events.
So two circumstances that were working in conjunction – not one.
The first circumstance or event was that Mr.Big didn’t want to see me as often as I liked.
This was way more than a sex thing.
We had platonic dates occasionally, but it wasn’t like he was throwing those around like candy. I usually had to work or wait, just as long and hard for those, as for the real ones that were long and private enough to have sex.
But in all fairness, Mr.Big and me had seen each other almost sporadically from the very beginning. It was nothing new. And although I had toyed with the idea of getting a second lover, at least once a year, I had always put it aside.
It was not for me.
I was a monogamist, and although I liked Mr.Big to have adventures, I knew that having them for myself would seriously jeopardize my relation and sexual experience with Mr.Big. I was sabotaging the pleasure of surrendering to Mr.Big; both sexually as well as calendar wise.
Not knowing when he wanted to see me, was in essence a pleasure enhancing experience.
Which I would lose if I would start having sex with someone else in the meantime.
But this year, the second event happened.
And I think it was this second thing, that suddenly gave the hypothetical idea of a second lover momentum;
I fell in love.
And it happened without me even noticing it, at first!
The only thing that in retrospect gave away something was up, was because I started rearranging my business (teaching yoga) and my second business (this writing) in a thousand ways.
It was madness I think.
But I was externalizing a restlessness inside of me.
I may not have consciously noticed my feelings for Christopher; But on an emotional level I was desperately trying to make that pain of longing go away, by controlling the things I could control.
All in vain of course.
No new business model is capable of solving being in love with two men.
Once I realized what was going on, the cat was out of the bag.
Christopher was the first new man I felt attracted to, ever since I fell for Mr.Big. His monopoly on my heart, was broken.
After this revelation that I could and did have feelings for other men, my “Let’s get a second lover” phase got a lot more serious this year.
And even brought me face to face with Salvatore, who would be perfect as a second lover. I wasn’t in love with Salvatore, but considered that a good thing.
It would be a drama free experience for both.
But then I thought about Christopher, and how I had felt about him, in that short time when there was a chance that he would become my second lover…
If he had said yes?
Man! I would have dived in head first!
Without any reservations and without coming up for air.
I would have gone all in.
And that’s when I realized the real reason I wanted a second lover didn’t have anything to do with sex. It had to do with love. I was in love with Mr.Big and with Christopher.
But Salvatore had made it clear, maybe even back in 2009 really, that he didn’t want me to fall in love with him.
And I understood that.
And it was all I needed to know, to make up my mind.
Dress you up is the twenty-first chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Lauren is crazy about her secret lover Mr.Big. And she loves having sex with him, but it happens only occasionally.
Which is why she’s having dinner with someone who could become her second lover.
“How did I manage to miss this?!” That was a sentence I was thinking a lot, the first half hour Salvatore and me had our date. Our short fling had lasted only a few nights and that was already nine years ago. But how had I managed to miss he was this smart?! Not just on an emotional level, but I had also failed to register the simple fact that he had been working on his PhD. Had I been so blinded by his surfer/ musician act, that I had never considered that part of the attraction might have been that he was a brilliant academic? He was now a fulltime engineer, and had gotten married to a Dutch girl, within a year after our little fling. The moment I had seen the first baby photo on Facebook, I was glad how things had turned out. Because he was a younger than me, but I had not considered that he would want children. Maybe because I felt that he was my senior. It was so obvious he was totally okay with his sexuality, and I was still so scared. I suffered from a phobia for hiv/std’s, that had kept me locked up in safe long-term relationships for decades. Salvatore met me after I had become single, in order to discover my own sexuality, despite of the fears.
He was one of the early lovers who had to deal with that, before I could relax, enjoy and have sex. So here we were, nine years after it had all happened, getting to know each other again over dinner. We were both taken: He had his family, and I had my secret lover Mr.Big. But we were very aware that this situation might actually work in our advantage. Firstly, there was no longer the option of us getting serious – something that he had been resisting. And there was also no longer the danger that I would get clingy or needy. My affair with Mr.Big had proven I could be a loving, and discrete mistress. A wise mistress even. The power difference, where I had wanted Salvatore to save me from my fears, was gone. That I had not noticed the level of his education nor his emotional intelligence – his ability to work around all those humongous fears, comfort me, and initiate me into rough sex, all in one go- that was strange. But I was even more taken aback by something he told me in the first five minutes: “I was absolutely crazy about you.” Not “in love”. He didn’t say that. But it wouldn’t have sounded right coming from him. He was one of those men with whom “absolutely crazy about you” meant “I was in love with you”. I had told myself the story, that the reason he had let me go was because he was just not in love with me. When in retrospect, I definitely should have been able to recognize that our wonderful, tender, emotionally charged love making, only happened because we both had feelings for each other. His constant tuning in to my feelings of fear, lust, insecurity, and finding out what I wanted and didn’t want?
Solving all riddles of mixed signals – of a mind that was confused, and a body that was simply begging for sex? His generous oral sex for me? And him asking permission even then – with that dripping wet and hungry body underneath him. He asked everything.
He was the most consensual lover I had ever had, and yet he was the one who introduced me to rough sex, or play rape. Which just proves how dominance and submissiveness are actually the most consensual thing you could possibly imagine. And it was a role play I had never done up until that point, but Salvatore knew in his bones that I would like it. I would always remember him as the first man who understood the submissive nature of my sexuality, and the first to satisfy it. Something that after him, only Mr.Big had been able to do. No wonder I had been with Big for so many years now. My affair with Salvatore happened summer 2009, just prior to my birthday. To this day, it was the saddest birthday I remember. And I created a whole story in my head that he had not been in love with me.
When everything he gave me had been signs of pure love, of pure connection. And of pure fear that we were going to hurt each other so badly, that he felt he had no choice but to end it, before it would turn sour. When our main course was served we had already relived our whole affair. And we could both understand how painful it must have been for the other. There was a lot of crying and comforting, and at one point all I could say was: “We did well. We did well.”
Like a Virgin is the twentieth chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Lauren still thinks she might, could, should, need a second lover.
But before she’s made up her mind, the first candidate is practically thrown into her lap.
I wish I had asked him how much she knew, his significant other. But the question seemed inappropriate.
And I didn’t want to ruin our time together before we had even talked about what we wanted.
Where did we want this to go?
If – or how – we were going to explore our feelings for each other, was like the elephant in the dining room. Therefor it was impossible for me to ask:
“What can I write, and what can’t I write about this date? How much does she know?”
Because that would be like asking: “That elephant we’re not going to talk about? What color socks is he wearing?”
You can’t talk about an elephant’s socks without acknowledging there’s an elephant.
You can’t talk about how you’re going to keep an affair secret, without acknowledging you’re considering an affair.
And that’s all it was.
We were both still only considering.
Fate had brought us together at a time when I realized I was not taking proper care of myself, in my secret affair with my longtime lover Mr.Big.
After years of getting too little sex, finding a second lover had almost become a necessity. I was done having years where the number of days I had sex was between five and ten.
And so far Mr.Big was not making more time for me, so this left me no choice. Regardless of how fond I was of him.
It was time to up my game.
I knew that, but like I said; Considering.
That’s all it was.
Part of me still hoped or even believed Mr.Big would stop me in my tracks, and ask me:
“Tell me your price!”
But there were other reasons as well, that I wasn’t going to take this second lover thing lightly. Because I had no idea what would happen.
I wasn’t even sure, if I would be able to enjoy having two lovers. Or if I would become chronically unhappy or in a constant state of panic. I could lose Mr.Big if I wouldn’t be able to make love anymore, surrender to him the way I used to.
Even if that was temporary: would he give me time to adjust?
Was I even allowed learning time, or did I have only one shot?
The uncertainty of having two lovers scared me.
And I could feel the same was true for the man I was now talking to, in this restaurant, with this giant elephant we were ignoring.
We were touching each other a lot, but not in a flirtatious matter.
It was more a comforting way of sharing our fears on a deeper level, that we didn’t want to fuck it all up. Not what we already had with our current partners. But also not with each other.
The touches were also a first curious exploration of our bodies liking or disliking each other.
They liked.
Not in an electric, flames-licking-ceiling way, but in a nice and comfortable way.
“It’s going to be okay,” the palm of his hand said to my arm.
“Can you believe they’re being so difficult?” my fingertips tickled his fingers.
But still there was so much hesitation, on both our parts. Because we didn’t want to risk what we had.
Neither one had made the decision that we needed to have an affair to keep things afloat “at home”. Let alone that we had already chosen the person we were having dinner with now, was The One.
Or rather The Second.
I had my reservations, about many, many things. But I could feel the connection was certainly promising.
And I m sure he had his reservations about me too.
Physically, sexually, emotionally.
But most of all, concerns for my writing.
It was a liability, I knew that. And I would do well not to draw attention to it.
If I wanted to leave my options open, the last thing I should ask on this date was:
“What can I share in my blog?”
So I didn’t.
Shoo bee doo is the nineteenth chapter from Project M.
Want to know what happens next?
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Someone who is having fun is Madonna; here with the Beastie Boys
Lauren has decided she needs a second lover, and the freedom to write about her experiences.
But she managed to miss the most important thing.
How long since I decided I needed a second lover? One week? Two? A year ago, two years? It’s so easy to see why I talked myself out of it, every time Mr.Big’s scarce availability had seemed to leave me no other choice.
A big reason was that I was scared having two lovers would trigger my std phobia, the anxiety attacks. I use condoms, that’s not the problem. But even then, the thought that at least one of my lovers, and probably both of them – since I expected my second lover to be a secret one as well – were going home and have unprotected sex with their partner, freaked me out. But this time I understood that this was a reason for me to push through: that you should never not fulfill a desire because of fear. I learned that lesson well, having this phobia dictate my sex life for nearly two decades. Another reason I had chickened out of searching for a second lover, was that I knew I was monogamous: I didn’t like the tension and excitement of having two lovers. I was way too much for me. But at this point too, I had already decided I would just have to find a way to deal with it. Unless I was okay staying at the mercy of Mr.Big’s erratic, or better sporadic, desire to see me. After three and a half year I was far from okay with that. I had gone through the decision making process countless times, and always with the same conclusion with regard to the second man.
Push through or perish. And I wasn’t ready to perish. Today I realized there were three – THREE! – major areas, on top of the phobia and monogamy objections, that had made me hesitant to pursue or allow, a second lover. And that were still keeping me from pushing through. 1. I was still hoping for Big to change his mind I knew he was a busy man, but I also knew he was jealous, and would prefer to have me to himself. Maybe he still thought he wasn’t allowed to claim me, because he was promiscuous himself? Could that be it? How many more times was I supposed to tell him, I liked him exactly the way he was, that the only thing I was asking for was more time to enjoy each other? I simply couldn’t believe Mr.Big would let me go without putting up a fight. That he’d really rather run the risk of me having sex with someone else, or even losing me permanently to someone else, than to prioritize seeing me. But at my bleakest moments I did believe it… And even concluded that this could be his way of breaking up. To just let me leave. But that all changed that last night together, where we just melted together, making love without a real beginning or end. Over three and a half years together and we had never been more insatiable. After that night, all my reasoning that Mr.Big wanted me to leave vaporized and I was positive he would now make me a priority. Until then of course he didn’t. And I was left to my own sinister thoughts once again. 2. I could lose Big If I would have a second lover, he might not want me anymore. Or I might fluke at being a mistress to both. I could even end up losing both, because of my inability to enjoy it. So that’s part of it. But another, more pressing emotion around this, is that getting a second lover basically in order to save my relationship with Mr.Big, reminds me of the final years within my long term relationship. There too, I tried to get a lover, since sex didn’t really have a place within our relationship anymore. And although we had spoken about what could happen, and what the risks were, the biggest risk turned out to be: What if I can’t do it? Because that’s what happened. I simply couldn’t pull it off to get a second lover on the side. It didn’t happen AT ALL. I felt like an ogre; completely unattractive, a different species even. And this infuriated me. Here I was, trying to save our relationship, only to find out that apparently nobody wanted me. This was a far more damaging experience for both of us, as well as to our relationship, than an affair could have ever been. It’s one of the reason I applaud cheating: at least someone is able to do what I could not. In the end of course, I understood that the reason me being the one with the affair didn’t work, was because I was monogamous. I wanted him to have an affair, do exciting things, and bring that energy back home to us. But he didn’t do that. At that time I didn’t know I was so monogamous by heart, and by nature; and neither did I realize that I needed a partner to be adventurous. I was completely in the dark about my sexuality. The only thing I got right about myself was that I was straight and had an std phobia. Everything else I found out after we broke up, and I rebuilt my love life. 3. I need to be in love I dated for eight years before I met Mr.Big. And in those eight years I had sex with eleven men, usually in very short relationships. Sometimes we slept together only once or twice.
And it were painful years. Either because I was deeply in love, so the sex was fabulous but I got hurt badly. That happened four times: With Nathan, the secret lover who broke my heart by dumping me the moment he became available. Salvatore, who was the first man who had a clue what my sexual nature was. But he wasn’t in love with me, and basically left me hanging before I could attach myself. Samuel, who had sex with me without telling me he had a girlfriend. He just got really angry saying it was all my fault, when I asked him for more than one night. It wasn’t until years later that I found out he had been cheating with me. And the final one with Rutger. With whom I was very much in love, but who didn’t want a long-distance relationship. He was not aggressive in ending it. He just let my attempts to stay in touch die out. But it was painful none the less. So those were the big dramas. The Big Four. The others were the men with whom I wasn’t in love, or not that much in love. But I had given up my long-term relationship in order to rebuild my sex-life, so I wasn’t going to limit myself. It was as if I instinctively knew I had to stay in the game. And I did, and those men were okay, some more than okay, and one was someone I still feel weird about. Too bad. In the end the eight years, were the eight years, and I came out wiser and more experienced. And that’s when I ran into Mr.Big. But now I find myself wanting a second lover, and I realize those eight years held a lesson which impacts what I m about to do; The lesson being that sex without being in love is simply no longer an option anymore. I had already established that a big reason I was hesitant getting an affair, was because I am a monogamist. I was convinced it increased my pleasure to only share myself with one man, and that this explained why I was so slow getting this show on the road. But I am seeing an entirely new pattern here. That in my case being a monogamist, doesn’t root in only wanting to share myself with one man. My monogamy has been a side-effect from something else! And it is the same reason I was so unsuccessful at getting my love life going, to save my relationship;
I only want sex with someone I am in love with. That’s why I do not regret the four men who painfully broke my heart, and yet consider the other eight men “an experience”.
Something that happened in a certain phase of my life.
And although it was nice and special, and also challenging at times, I don’t want to repeat that. No more “experiences”!
I only want sex where my body and mind and soul are absolutely fricking begging for it. No wonder I feel so much resistance getting a second lover. No wonder I feel like warning, maybe even shaking up Mr.Big: “Are you SURE this is your choice?” And let’s say I’ve learned so much, that this time I can do, what I could not do within that final phase long term relationship;
Have another lover so that I become less demanding within my relationship.
Then obviously, we’re no longer talking about a hierarchy where I have a one and two. And one is Mr.Big and I m in love with him.
And two is someone else, for whom I have less feelings. That is not a thing. I will never in my whole life have sex with somebody ever again, unless I am in love, AND – unlike those single years – I also need to know it’s not a one time thing. I need to know this man wants an affair with me. So if I pull all that off?
Then I will not “just” have a second lover, to keep me warm when Mr.Big is too busy too see me. No. We’re talking about a man with whom I would be crazy in love, have wonderful sex with, and share a deeply emotional connection. In other words: we’re talking about a real threat to Mr.Big.
And ironically all that would still be the good scenario.
Because the worse that could happen to our relationship, is that just like all those years ago, I can’t pull it off.
And I don’t find him.
That I fuck it up now, just like I fucked it up twelve years ago.
By not even being capable, of getting another lover.
Love don’t live here anymore is the eighteenth chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Lauren wants to be eligible so badly, she offers to make the ultimate sacrifice.
And immediately regrets it.
Tuesday September 11, 2018
I’m writing this in my notebook (paper) in my favorite cafe. It’s actually a hotel but that makes it sound all posh, and it’s low key. I always write on paper when I m on location, because I don’t have a laptop. They say writing by hand stirs up deeper emotions. Should I write more blog posts by hand first? Would it improve my writing? The reason I m here at the cafe, drinking wine and writing, is that I ve been going through a 72 hour meltdown after I stepped away from being a tell-all diarist and sex blogger. I offered a certain gentleman, it may have even be several, that I could do it. Be a good girl and stop spilling the beans on my sex life.
Which inevitably is an our sex life. I even suggested that I might be able to stop my work as a mistress expert, in order to please or to be good enough. But just the thought of it resulted in my current crisis, so I was wrong. I can’t offer that at all. It is hard to put a finger on it, why I m responding like this. I always saw my pen as a weapon, something that allowed me to date dangerous men. Men who were not just out of my league, but out of any woman’s league. Because these dangerous men cheat. Either literally, by putting their dick in more than one woman. Or emotionally, by not being available, not committing, not offering transparency of any kind. These are the men that leave women heart broken and their lives destroyed. Ironically, these voracious men are susceptible to 30-something women offering them salvation as a husband or a father. The slate will be wiped clean and all their past wrongdoings forgiven.
It is only when you see how quickly these men say yes to becoming a husband or a father, that you realize how eager they are to be saved from themselves. Those are the men I date: always on the brink of something. Of cheating. Of getting serious. Of winning a woman’s heart. Of ripping it out and feeding it to the lions. There’s always something up. And that’s why I write, because it allows me to date them. I am the sole teller of the story. I monopolize the truth, even when it’s a lie. Even if a man doesn’t allow me to write about him, then I rewrite the truth of my own emotional state. As if I knew what I was doing all along. So the pen still does its work of manipulating, claiming, embellishing. But my last time sex with Mr.Big changed all that. We were so intimate that for a moment I longed to put down my weapon, my pen. To never write another word about him or any other man. I wanted to be naked and vulnerable, from this moment forward. I wanted the thrill of knowing I wasn’t holding anything back, and the pleasure of surrendering fully. Either I would stop being a writer and reposition myself as a mistress expert. Someone who had been a secret mistress in the past, but whose current love life was no longer public. Or I could take it even further and stop writing for LS Harteveld altogether and curate my work, publishing books from material I already had. LS Harteveld would die. Those are the emotions Mr.Big’s love making drew out of me. That I was done trying to make sense of my love life. With him, with Christopher, or perhaps even other men, about whom I could never write. If I would stop writing, give up control, the situation would automatically sort itself out. I so longed to be passive, to lay down my arms. And I did. I wrote the man who had told me his concerns about my writing, that I had been toying with the thought of quitting for a long time.
Which was true. I had been thinking about quitting writing from the moment I realized I wanted a second lover. But I expected it to work in my advantage, regardless of how my love life played out. But that was before my 72 hour meltdown. Now I know I was wrong offering him I could quit. It doesn’t even have anything to do with me needing a weapon. The reason I should never have offered to lay down my pen is the same reason every writer has. Because writing is how I breathe. Without it, I don’t exist. LS Harteveld may have started out as pen name, so I could write about sex and relationships without having it associated with my real name.
But that is no longer the case.
Over the past twelve years, I have become the writer LS Harteveld. If she dies, then so do I.
Crazy for You is the seventeenth chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
That was quick! Within days after Lauren has decided she wants to make her flaky love life next level awesome, she has The.Best.Sex.Of.Her.Life.
It wasn’t just having the best sex of my life, that explains for the long absence here. It was something else. Technically, my decision had been, or maybe even still is, to get two lovers. Two men I was totally in love with. And I wasn’t going to name them beforehand.
I wasn’t going to say one of them was my current lover Mr.Big. And I certainly wasn’t going to limit myself, saying one of the lovers was Christopher, the man who had been able to kick my affection for new men out of hibernation. And with whom I had been in a status quo; With him not wanting to jeopardize his marriage, and me respecting that choice. But things had started moving and I couldn’t possibly write about what had happened within the setup I had put Christopher in. The web of lies would become too complicated. You see: I don’t actually speak the truth here. Or as my creativity coach said: “You’re not?! We all thought you were dating Idris Elba and living out all our fantasies!” Referring to the fact that I had used the photo of Idris Elba on my posts about Christopher. No, I m not dating Idris Elba. Out of all the characters, and especially the male ones, and IN PARTICULAR the men I have feelings for, the only thing I can guarantee you is that I don’t switch genders.
They’re all indeed male. Everything else could be a lie. I have no idea why I m telling you this, but I feel deeply unfulfilled because I haven’t written here for sooo long. I feel a need to amp things up, and reveal all that I can. That’s the impossible position I have been in; On one hand so many things have happened with so many men, that I can’t write about. Or not without seriously altering the truth, in a way that I lose emotional connection to it, and therefor lose interest to write about it. And on the other hand, it is so nourishing for me to write here. For this account. It pushes me to dig deeper, and expose layers of myself I didn’t even know existed. Or it confronts me with truths, that I can easily bypass for my other Dutch diary, which is connected to my yoga studio. This year, I went through months of reorganizing my life and my business. And although the causes were many, I m pretty certain that a large part had to do with me missing the fact that I was in love with Christopher. I was in a permanent restless state, which I tried to settle by reorganizing the aspects in my life I could control. But the reason I didn’t see the affection, the crush, was because I didn’t allow myself to write here. Or not enough anyway. I managed to miss those emotions, because I didn’t dig deep enough. I didn’t investigate what the fuck was going on… So this week I WAS aware of everything happening, and yet I couldn’t share any of it. It was highly frustrating. And now it’s Sunday, and I still have no idea how to proceed this journal, this blog, my life. But I do know that I need to start sharing everything I can before I accidentally reorganize my entire business (and I was well on my way today!) out of sheer frustration over everything and everyone, that requires to stay under the radar. Best sex with Mr.Big however, does not need to stay under the radar. I’m still unsure why he was suddenly available a long date, when he had been keeping that from me for so long. But Mr.Big, or the Universe, had another surprise for us as well; Not just a long date, but intimacy to the max. Now I do hope that we’ll soon pick up our List Of Unfulfilled Perverted Fantasies (to be honest, this is not “our” list; it is mine) but we didn’t that night. We had the most intimate sexual experience we ever had in those three and a half years that I had been his secret mistress. He made me dinner, and we talked a little bit about the things he had told me the last time, about what had been going on in his life. We didn’t talk about my crush on Christopher at all, but I don’t rule out that me telling him a month ago, about these feelings, had inadvertently forced Mr.Big to rethink what he wanted from our affair. If he was going to keep withdrawing, leaving my heart for the wolves or whomever was going to cut me a better deal. Or if he wanted to stay in the game. The fact that we made love for hours on end, never really stopping, both having too many orgasms to count, convinced me he had chosen the latter. Mr.Big wanted to stay in the game. And he was reclaiming me in a way that would practically make it impossible for another man to conquer me. You see, Mr.Big knows me. And he knows how much effort it would cost me to go against my monogamous nature, and have affairs with two men at once. But he also knows that I’m in love with Christopher, and he knows I think I deserve to have two lovers, or even should be having two lovers, after he had sidetracked me. He also knows that a second lover wouldn’t be a reaction to him being married, or because he was adventurous in bars or on business trips. I never asked for details but I knew enough to let it turn me on. And too little to really be jealous. His most recent bender had actually excited me, because it had been the first time when he had told me beforehand it was coming. On the night it happened I was tied to home, probably writing in my diary or something. And I was so happy that he was probably having an adventure! And that I didn’t have to go, and could still benefit from the secondhand excitement.
So maybe those two things, the threat of Christopher four weeks prior or so, and the connection over his night out with the boys in the month in between, had something to do with us finding new levels of love and of lust.
It was the best night I ever had with him, or any other man.
Mr.Big was right.
The last thing I yearned for now was another man.
And yet I knew it was too late.
That whether I would write about him or not;
Whether it was Christopher or not;
The second lover was already out there.
And I knew what I had to do in order to let him in.
I just didn’t know if I could do it.
Over and Over is the sixteenth chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
After seeing the movie Book Club, Lauren has decided she’s going next level in her love life.
With help from the guardian angel that got her back on her feet last time.
I didn’t see this coming.
I mean, I knew that I left my long term relationship in 2006 to create a new love life.
Based on excitement, and the newness of being in love. On first times, new lovers and on conquering the fears that stood between me and the life I wanted.
And I succeeded.
It was actually really easy.
At least the conquering of the fears was.
Once I decided that I no longer wanted a life that was carefully crafted around things that scared the shit out of me, the hard work was already done.
Sure, I saw a sex therapist.
Once or twice, I can’t even remember.
But it was clear, to both the therapist and me, that I had made up my mind and nothing was going to stop me.
I might still freak out and have panic attacks. But I would never get knee deep into avoidance, consumed by fear, the way I had spent the two decades prior.
Yesterday I created the first video in my Sexual Mastership 40+ series.
It was just an introduction, on how the movie Book Club had inspired me to stand up for sex when you’re older.
That I was offended that the movie portraited elder women as barely sexual capable, and tied to limitations which may be valid when you’re young.
But that should have been dealt with long before menopause.
Mature women were not mentally unstable teenagers in aging bodies.
They were stronger, free, and daring.
And they could do anything they pleased.
That’s what Book Club could have, should have, emphasized.
That 50 Shades of Grey might have been a leap for virgin Anastasia Steele. But that there was an entire demographic ready to turn up the heat.
However.
Now that this opportunity had obviously been missed, I would take it from here. So I started a video series on YouTube, Sexual Mastership 40+.
Where the first video immediately received a lot of clicks.
I felt guilty for using the words “mature sex” in the title. Even though it was tied to Book Club as well!
So I don’t think I took advantage of people looking for porn, but still…
It was strange to have a video immediately doing so well.
And I felt strong in my new role, as an inspirator on this subject.
Until I started reading a sex diary from a well-known Dutch author, where she documents her love life with her young lover with whom she lives.
That was when I realized, that simply choosing 40+, did not mean I actually had something in common with other women.
If the most sexually advanced author of the Netherlands, lives together with her boyfriend, then who am I going to sell on the idea that if you make sex a priority, the first thing you should do is NOT live together?
That even allowing for garden variety sex, is the absolute death to your sex life.
Garden variety sex means any sex where you don’t have a MASSIVE build up of sexual tension.
And this tension can come from anything.
For example:
Not knowing him.
Being in love.
Not seeing each other.
Having an argument.
Danger.
BDSM.
Role playing and powerplay.
And this type of sexual tension was indeed fully absent on the first twenty pages of the sex diary. It was all garden variety sex. And this was the book that was supposed to liberate women, and teach them how to ask for sex.
Give them an example of how a sex life in a relationship could look like.
The author did acknowledge that there was a big difference in the way people talk about their sex lives when they were dating, as opposed to when they were in a real relationship.
But she didn’t seem to share my conclusion that this was a strong indicator there was something inherently wrong with being a relationship.
If you are a hundred percent serious about having a great sex life, you have to be willing to sacrifice your relationship if necessary.
But if the majority of women were apparently looking for a way to spice up sex with a guy with whom they were living?
Then I was out.
You go figure that one out by yourself.
So that was how my day started!
Not particularly motivating, to realize that my new passion project Sexual Mastership 40+ should probably have said for solitary women.
Or men.
Or gender neutral as long as they live alone.
In fact, I m going to add that right now.
( the project is now renamed to Sexual Mastership 40+ and Solitary )
So after I had gotten all reactive, witnessing my new calling to serve the masses, being marginalized to perhaps being of some use to the one percent within the one percent, I got back to my initial plans.
Thursday August 30?
What’s up?
And I realized I still had my “little” challenge waiting for me.
In order to kickstart Sexual Mastership 40+, I had decided I was going to rebuild my love life.
Not so much the same way I had done twelve years ago!
Ha ha ha ha.
Nooo…. because what I had found was that I could have done it so much quicker. I took the long, longer, longest road. Which was okay. I mean it’s always okay, we travel the way that suits us.
There were a couple of things I did do right. And the first was also the most important element to success.
I DECIDED.
That’s really all you need.
Once you decide that you’re going to redesign your love life, everything else will follow from there. The right navigation tool will take you there faster.
But any road will get you there as long as you know the destination, and keep asking for directions.
The decision is the destination.
Twelve years ago I didn’t have the right navigation tool, but I did choose the right destination; A sex life that was based on what I valued.
First time experiences.
Being in love.
New men.
And it was no longer going to be based on my phobia that I would get hiv, or another std. That had been the big thing that had kept me tied to safe and long term relationships for as long as I could remember.
I wasn’t bad at long-term relationships. Quite the opposite, I was good at them.
But I was unsure if I would have had them, if it hadn’t been for the fear surrounding having a love life as a single.
Fear is the wrong reason to do anything.
Let alone build an entire life around it.
So I decided I was leaving the relationship.
One very important person during this time, was Benjamin.
Benjamin was someone who I had met when I was still a teenager, at a moment when I was in a relationship. But even though I was still very young, I was aware that I was in the relationship because my aids phobia simply didn’t allow for a normal love life as a single.
And Benjamin was everything I had been looking for.
Charismatic. Intelligent. And some thought he was arrogant, but I felt safe with him. He was very refined.
I felt loud compared to him, and I probably was.
I could have “had” Benjamin, if I had conquered my fears right then and there. But I didn’t.
And it would take me fifteen years before I did.
I thought about him a lot, in the months that surrounded my breakup from my partner, but also the breakup with my own, fearful self.
Eventually, I mustered the courage to contact him. He wrote that he had gotten married. It had been the same month my boyfriend and me had broken up.
He had basically been single up to the moment he met his wife.
I saw the bigger meaning. Obviously, he was not the man who would save me. Not back in the days, when I had been too fearful. And not now, since he had settled just as I was ready to start my adventure.
Although I saw that it was almost divinely orchestrated, how our lives had made it impossible to be together, what I failed to realize was that it wasn’t just him, who was not coming to save me.
NO ONE WAS.
That is one of the many, many things that I am going to do differently this second time around.
Creating the love life of your dreams is a two step process.
Step one, I already mentioned: Decide.
But step two is: YOU have to BE the new version of you.
Not “become the new version after being saved or helped by the right man”.
ALL you have to do after you decide, and this is the navigation system I was talking about, is to live from that place.
So in my case, it would have meant to start living as a responsible adult, who is aware of the dangers of sex, but who is also able to carry herself and take risks in order to express herself sexually.
Someone who will use condoms, but who will never dramatize the danger that she knows that is still present regardless.
Someone who understands that you can stay a hundred percent safe, but not if you also want to live your life.
Or at least HER life.
That was all I had to do.
But instead I was so focused on how my sexual experiences were going to be, and especially focused on getting the right partner, who could guide me through it.
What a waste of time.
To step into that role, that was all I had to do.
I could have cured my aids phobia without even seeing another man in my life. That fear lived inside of me. It didn’t have anything to do with the existence of men, and this idea is basically something that I feel touches on something much broader;
Sex is an inside job.
I ve experienced this with partners as well;
The ones who are good at sex, will enjoy it with a variety of women. Sure they will give me compliments, but we both know that I’m not exactly the first woman he’s having a good time with.
And the same with the ones who are having difficulties.
The experience of sex is for 80% the result of you being comfortable with it.
And 20% at most, what your partner brings to the bed.
So, anyway, I didn’t realize that twelve years ago.
That I shouldn’t make such a big deal of finding the man right for the job to sweep me off my feet, stand by my side or even magically heal me of my fears.
I never met an ideal man like Benjamin, and yet after eight years I did consider myself healed. When I met my current lover Mr.Big, who was by far the riskiest of any of the men I met, I did say yes. And I did work through the residu of fears that I was still carrying around. Although in a way conquering this fear is a lifelong thing. But with Mr.Big, I didn’t make the mistake I had made with Benjamin. And I never regretted it. So when I say that I never expected “to do this again”, what I mean is that I never expected to set out on the same quest, as I had done twelve years ago. To rise above my fears. First of all, because I considered myself healed. And I now had the perfect lover Mr.Big. And secondly, because I thought I would now “do” something else, and my next quest would be one to become famous and/or earn a lot of money. I found it fascinating that people who had prioritized that, instead of their sex lives, had materialized that. I had the great sex, because that’s what I had focused on. They had the great income, because that had been their priority. And now we were all in our forties, and I imagined we would all swap sides and get on to the next thing. They would go through their “but what about me phase” and I would get my shit together. But then things with Mr.Big started to get a bit wobbly. And suddenly I wasn’t convinced that I “had” the ideal lover. I didn’t even know if we would ever get back to our lovely long dates and groundbreaking sex. It had been so long that he had given me a whole night.. And I started thinking of getting a second lover, more and more frequently. So that I wouldn’t start obsessing over Mr.Big. But also, as my creativity coach explained, to ensure that there would always be some sort of tension going on, so that I could write. And there was a third reason why having two lovers, or a second lover, was appealing: It meant that I would up my game. One of the reasons I kept dismissing the idea of a second lover was that it completely freaked me out that I could then possibly transmit an std from one partner to another. Even with condoms: I m phobic enough to know that unless you treat each other’s genitals like they’re radioactive material, there are viruses that you can transmit. Mr.Big was my reward, my prize, for having conquered my own fears of getting an std. But pretty soon I realized that the phobia had been a two-headed dragon. Not only could it shape shift from a fear of hiv to being scared of all life-long std’s; but the two heads also meant that there were two sides. What I had been focusing on all those years was overcoming my fear to contract something. But I was still phobic of transmitting something to a lover. Especially if it was someone who would go home to his wife after. I was nowhere near taking that responsibility! I was miles from standing in my power, and being okay with the risks of being the villain here. The bad woman. So twelve years after I have left my boyfriend and reinvented my love life, because I knew that long-term relationships based on fear were not a good thing, I will now work on this. Not having two lovers because I’m scared, can never be a good thing. I want to overcome this and reach the level where I am comfortable with it. So no business goals or money goals for me. Twelve years since I started my journey, and I m right back at the beginning. With a decision: I will get two lovers. And by being that person, who already has that solved. Everything in my life- the language I use, the ideas I express, the way I dress, everything – will now have to align with Me Having Two Lovers. That was the secret I wish I had known twelve years ago. You conquer your fears by living like it is already done. You get two lovers by living like they’re already there. You achieve Sexual Mastership, by acting like you own the part. And then there is Benjamin. Years before I broke up with my boyfriend (years!!), I cut a picture of a dark young man from a magazine, and pasted it into my notebook. He reminded me of Benjamin.
That was the first time I thought of him since it all happened. Shortly after my breakup I started writing about Benjamin. And two years after my breakup I met a new young men, who reminded me so much about Benjamin, and I started writing about him too. I ve looked up that initial picture many times. Did I really cut that out, and manifested him?
Manifested that he would become so important to me on a spiritual level, as well as calling in a doppelganger into my life? I think I did. For the past twelve years, I dreamed about Benjamin, prayed to him. Let him spoon up against him, an imaginary man lying behind me in bed. Giving me advice. Lately I ve called onto him on several occasions. When someone emailed me, and I was afraid to open it. Or when I had to do something scary. “We can do this, ” I told the spirit of Benjamin. He was my ally. Maybe that was the real gift, over 25 years ago. That he was indeed never meant to be my real lover. Firstly because I was still phobic when I met him. And then because he had gotten married, by the time I was ready. I had met him so that I would have him in spirit, throughout my entire life. Like a guardian angel.
Angel is the fifteenth chapter from Project M.
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tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
After seeing the comedy Book Club, Lauren abandons everything and puts her cards on sex.
All of them. Effective immediately.
It had been one of those extra long blog posts about day-to-day shenanigans, that took me five hours and left me feeling totally disintegrated, that had made me realize: “Writing is not making me any money. If I want to build a business doing what I love, I have to put yoga first.” “Yoga” referred to rebuilding my yoga studio teaching privates, and creating yoga videos.
The videos were not just a good way to do my marketing.
They were also the only way I could make myself do something that resembled a yoga self-practice. Doing yoga at home was something I had been unsuccessful at for over a decade.
Making two half hour yoga videos was a lot easier.
Or so I thought.
Because the two Madonna yoga videos took me four hours a day. Including preparing the little talk about the song that was the title of the video, and writing a small column in the description box of the video.
I had high hopes I would be able to work more effectively but even then I could never see myself getting it under three hours..
The only reason I was still teaching yoga in the first place, was because the studio was providing a business address. I had already chosen to go all in for my writing, but soon realized I would still need a business address to register my writing biz at the Chamber of Commerce. In the Netherlands this registration is mandatory; It’s not an option to not do it, if you want to start selling your own books. Anyway, because my home address is secret, I needed to rent a location. Ironically, keeping my yoga studio on, was the easiest and one of the cheapest ways to do this. Also, this was a yoga space, not an office space. I could still earn back my rent teaching yoga. When I combined my desire for a daily yoga practice, with marketing my private classes, the yoga videos were born. And I also added Madonna, to make it more interesting for myself. And dear God, after writing that blog post that had taken five hours, and had sucked the life right out of me, it became extra appealing to prioritize the two yoga videos and doing it first thing A.M.. Then I would never have a Writing Hijacked My Day experience again!
I got up at 05.45 to make the videos.
They were still taking four hours or more. I was losing precious time to feeling resistance, and a lack of concentration. And then the day came when I got up at 05.45 and yet I didn’t make the bloody videos…
Fuck it.
I had assumed, that as long as I would get up on time, the rest would kind of take care of itself.
And I did prepare. And I got dressed. And although it had been an awful slow morning, I started filming at a decent enough time. But then I threw away three videos when I was already 15 minutes in or more.
One because I had failed to put on the lights.
One because my neighbor started playing guitar.
And the third because I felt so flat and tired, it was simply unwatchable. I had already spent over four hours, and I had NOTHING to show for. I was calling it quits. No more yoga videos. Now I knew that there was something infinitely more dissatisfying than finding yourself drained from writing a blog post;
It was losing hours and hours to creating videos that were ultimately not even made. Meanwhile, on my latest session with my creativity coach Sara, she had pointed out that my work as the Good Mistress, was just the tip of the iceberg.
I had two books planned on the subject, and created Good Mistress videos, but it was becoming more and more likely that the Good Mistress was only a snipped of a much greater cause;
Sex and relationships as a way to claim ownership of your life.
And to acquire full mastery of it.
This realization had started with me ranting about a comedy called Book Club, about middle aged women reconnecting to their sexuality after reading the 50 Shades trilogy.
What had infuriated me was that despite Anastasia Steele, who surely pushed her boundaries in love and sex by accepting Christian Grey’s invitation to his Red Room of Pain; the four characters from Book Club did no such thing. There was a maneater who had been trying to protect herself from being hurt, finding love again with her youth love. That was it.
That was the character development. And the other three were similar. All staying firmly on the vanilla side of the spectrum. You can’t possibly start a movie waving around 50 Shades novels, and then let the story end with four mature women finding relationships that would barely satisfy the average twenty year old, and expect the audience to like it. My expectations had been a little higher than that.
Namely that it is especially in this age group where it is appropriate to differentiate from classic monogamous vanilla love, and start taking way more risks. What made 50 Shades so erotic, but also controversial within the real BDSM community, was that Anastasia was a virgin, who had no experience with relationships whatsoever.
Being a submissive was not on her request. Technically he had asked her consent, but in reality she was in no position to say No. It was like offering food to the starving, after you’ve spoiled it with sand. He never should have done that. Offering sex to a virgin, but only within the context of a dominant and a submissive, was definitely his cruelest act. That is why it would have been so welcoming if Book Club had shown us, how fabulous the concept of dominance and submissive sex can work in a mature relationship. And how exciting it can be, to explore all the things your mother warned you about, at a much later age. When you are no longer supervised and no one gives a rat’s ass, about what you do in the bedroom. Your virginity or your reputation are no longer at stake. You can’t get pregnant anymore. And all the other real or imaginary dangers that are connected to teenage and twenties conditioning, are simply no longer valuable.
If they ever were. Book Club had the potential to show that. That the game Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele had been playing in their twenties, is so much more fun when you’re in your senior years. It could have saved that marriage in Book Club. Which was now saved dancing to Meatlove, after hubby had effectively ignored all tie-wrap and Duct Tape hints his wife had dropped. Book Club settled for being a movie where we learn older people can have sex. Instead of raising the bar showing that they have the best cards to have THE BEST SEX EVER. I feel that “forced” monogamy and glorifying chastity, are defendable and to a degree understandable when you’re setting up the rules for young people who want to start a family.
However they can no longer be used when you’re over 40. Ideally you start off in your teens, having normal sex in safe relationships. And you build that up to exciting sex in safe relationships or normal sex in exciting relationships, whichever you prefer; And when you’re over 40 you can do both. You can have exciting sex in exciting relationships. A mistress usually has normal sex, but in an exciting relationship. It’s not for beginners, but if you’re over 30 and it suits your preferences, the Mistress role could be played.
However, the mistress is only one of the avatars, or archetypes, of having an adult sex life. There could be so much more. And even the mistress could up her game by shifting to riskier sex, or by becoming the mistress of two men. And it was at that moment, discussing how I wanted to put my broader vision out there, supporting amazing sex lives for a mature audience, that it hit me why I was always only interested in sex. And also why I had felt depleted after writing for five hours over something that was not sex. Or even why I had felt so much resistance making yoga videos.
Because it was SEX where my message lay.
Not yoga, not building a business, not writing. Not even diary writing unless it was about these deeply transformative shifts. And with this new insight, I could also start developing my own sexual identity, without having to pin it down to being a mistress. I could rebrand my whole life to achieving sexual mastership over forty.
That was my new topic. And I could include my current struggles, that had to do with being a mistress.
The unclear status of my relationship with my lover Mr.Big. The deadlock with Christopher. Who had chosen not to see me again, now that we knew we had feelings for each other and he was married. Those struggles would now serve as test cases for achieving that mastery over my sex life. On how to stay the course and get what you want.
Because if my new message was that you could create a brand new and fantastic sex life over forty, then there really was only one way to prove it. Show it could be done.
Want to know how you can create your dream sex life?
Follow this blog and watch me do it.
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right. or followTwitter ; orFacebook
tenth anniversary of the book that changed my life!
Summer 2008 I started writing in English. Dutch American Diary Just like now, I was in love with two men. And just like now, they were both taken.
And – yes, just like now – I had no idea where life would take me.
This 2008 diary became the only thing that offered stability during a time where I had just left my partner after fourteen years and the two new men were driving me crazy. A book about starting over in your mid-thirties and reinventing yourself as a lover; As a woman; And as a vengeful fury from hell.
Het Boek Benjamin € 45 verzameld werk NL en Engels. Het enige boek dat hier niet inzit is Witte Tijgerin, dus mijn andere Nederlandse boeken zitten hier wél in.
Mango €15 coming of age novelle
22 erotische verhalen € 15 literaire pornografie in de geest van Anais Nin
Witte Tijgerin €5 gids voor solitaire vrouwen die een geweldig seksleven willen en plenty energie
“When in love, have sex.
Summer 2008 I started writing in English.
After not writing for over a week, Lauren comes up, gasping for air.
Although “Start before you’re ready” is one of Lauren’s favorite sayings, she has serious doubts about her double booking as a secret mistress.
Lauren is crazy about her secret lover Mr.Big. And she loves having sex with him, but it happens only occasionally.
Lauren still thinks she might, could, should, need a second lover.
Lauren wants to be eligible so badly, she offers to make the ultimate sacrifice.
That was quick!
LS Harteveld 