it’s all in your head | The Mistress Speaks episode 2

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

There is a saying:           
“Space is your most precious piece of furniture.”              
Everybody who’s ever worked with an architect or interior designer will have heard of it.        
And I wonder:                
Why is it that when it comes to spaces we are well aware that an expensive hotel room feels like an invitation to stay in, make love, and leave after a few hours or a few days with memories that will last you until your next date or the rest of your life?      

Yet we tend to both our houses and relationships, with stuff we picked up along the way, and that we may not even be particularly happy with?

Why are we willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a hotel room, and yet at the same time allow junk into our own homes?        
You can see it in your house if you’re holding on to stuff that doesn’t make you happy.

But there are also plenty of people who don’t hold on to stuff and even have routines to keep their home clean, including a place for weird things, like clothes that are to be taken to the sewing shop. Or borrowed things that need to be returned to their owner.   
Where every object has got a home.       
And yet!            
When it comes to their relationships, they can find themselves carrying around a ton of unsorted expectations, disappointments, and even adopted beliefs from others which they never bothered to organize, declutter, or look after.    
They simply assume that there will be one partner, who will just tie aaaaalllll loose ends together.                    
And I have been like that myself, so I don’t blame you.                 

For a long time I assumed that my sexual healing would come from having the perfect lover. I know now that sexual healing is an inside job, and it may actually be wiser to not have a lover during the time you’re figuring stuff out.             
And don’t have the skills and beliefs in place, that you’re going to need in order to do your part of your perfect time between the sheets, or to do your part in the relationship.

If Mr.Right or Mrs.Right comes along when you’re still a hot mess, then don’t turn them away!            
But definitely don’t assume that becoming good at relationships, or sex, is something you need a partner for.          
It’s all in the head.         
Repeat.
IT S ALL IN THE HEAD.            
And once you’ve got it figured out in there, you can be with anyone you choose.             

One of the things my lover keeps bringing up as a reason why he thinks our relationship has not been properly tested (enough for him to consider giving up his marriage), is that we spent so little time together.
And I always tell him that if we would see more of each other, nothing would change in that area.       
I’m simply extremely good at relationships.       
That’s not a lucky shot, nor is it something that would change if we had more time together.  

What is interesting, is something I picked up from the BDSM scene.  Although the word mistress means the dominant in the BDSM scene, in my case being a mistress is my preferred relationship form. I can see the benefits of being the other woman.          
But within my affair, I’m submissive.    
I let him decide when he wants to see me and in bed I take great pleasure in doing “as I’m told”. Quotation marks, because a good dominant works his butt off to please you and read your signals, but maybe you already knew that.             

Anyway my lover and me are role players. We will “play” anything in which he is the dominant and I’m the submissive.
Again quotation marks, because our play is very informal, and often doesn’t take more than a few words. We never dress the part or anything.           
No whips are involved. 
So although we’re not part of the BDSM scene, I did pick up a wisdom from that scene that really hit home for me:   
The dominant wants to feel needed. The submissive needs to feel wanted.             

This sentence gives the Achilles heel to my relationship coping skills:
I, the harmonious submissive, need to feel wanted.         
If he would demand the impossible, or is angry with me or anything like that;             
I can handle it. 
But if I feel unwanted, for example if my presence would be ignored, then I would leave. Staying would be unbearable, and make me incredibly sad.              
So a very important part of me being good at this relationship is that I have this picture of my role in my head. And I can also see how I could potentially ruin our entire relationship, if I would do anything to undermine his power.             

This does also require a dominant/ a man to stand his ground.  
I don’t need to get a spanking or anything. Although I wouldn’t mind! But it is crucial that a man immediately calls me out on it, if I cross the line.    

Having this picture in my head of our desired power dynamic, is a fantastic guideline for me.           

And then there is the second.    
I have to hand it to my lover: this one is indeed currently (still?) tied to being his secret mistress.        
Because the second image I have in my head, on who I want to be within our affair and which guides me, is that of someone who you associate with the good times, with feeling loved and admired. Someone who will enjoy every minute of your time together.  However, here’s the trick:             
This is not just to please him!    

I get so much pleasure out of it myself. I get to leave all my emotional baggage behind, my old limited self; And be a new and improved version of me.  
When I go on a date with my lover, I not just step out of my house, but also out of my old shell. And into a life filled with sparkles, love and laughter.             
A thousand dollar hotel room.

~The Mistress

The Mistress Speaks has been published in 2021.
You can find her here in the bookstore.

.
about “GLOW-UP 2026”

In January, Google has started pushing my old posts.
Unfortunately, my website was one of many casualties of WordPress Gugenheim software updates.
Meaning the layout of this post was completely destroyed and none of the new visitors was able to read it.

Therefor I have decided to run by all my old posts, starting with the ones currently in rotation, and give them a well-deserved update that will do what glow-ups are supposed to do;
Make them better.

—
Subscribe to this blog, and receive my current work.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Live to tell

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Lauren has already brought her complicated love life back to minimalist innocence, but almost missed out on writing her masterpiece.
Or rather;
A Mistresspiece.

It was in the final 5 minutes of our coaching call when it hit me!
Creativity coach Sara and me had been going over my newfound love for my yoga studio, and my decision to write only for pleasure.
Not as a business model.
However, with writing not making any money of its own, my desire to step up, educate, entertain or even speak about being a secret mistress had vanished.
No money, no honey.
Which was fine because I was totally uninspired to curate my pieces on mistresshood and sexuality, for a book called The Big Mistress.
And felt even more hopeless about writing a comprehensive mistress guide where I would teach all the lessons I had learned along the way.
Twelve steps in becoming a mistress or something.
I don’t know.
Whatever it was, I didn’t want to write it.
And I didn’t want to compose my books from the perspective of helping people either. The thought that I had to break it down to the level where everybody had their fears dealt with and had their biggest objections addressed?
In the unlikely situation I would actually succeed making my mistress model into a self-help tool, it would be a toothless tiger.
And still put me at risk of scrutiny or social exclusion.
I just wasn’t willing to take the fall for that.
But then again, to have another framework – yet again!- slip through my fingers the moment it was ready to be released into the world?
That was painful.
Sara comforted me by saying that although I am one of those artists who has qualities throughout the whole cycle of the creative process, my true passion lies at the beginning of it.
With The Expressionist.
That is where I pick from The Void, a subject of interest. It can be something no one appreciates yet, or it can be something that others deeply respect.
It can be a sacred thing.
I snatch it out of the air.
Study it, chew on it, try things out.
I examine it, dissect it, turn it inside out, and fix the pieces temporarily, onto some sort of already existing foundation.
And then I start building it up from there.
Connecting the different pieces, and going higher and higher.
Ultimately, I take the earliest framework out from underneath it, only the finalized structure remains.
And then it is done.
The Mistress Framework for the other woman.
Or the White Tigress work for single women.
Even a yoga book I had practically all done and ready… and I never published it.
Because when it is time for it to start making its own money, and for me to illustrate  how the model can benefit you. When it is my time to guide, to listen, to understand?
All I want to do is crawl under a rock and die.
Which is why all those creative endeavors start highly productive, yet always end with me wasting months in resistance, and ultimately abandoning the project. Because I realize that I m not going to do this work that I SHOULD do.
Fuck the shoulds!
I just wasted months of my life, NOT creating what I really wanted to make. NOT being in alignment.
NOT living from soul.
And instead eyeing out this project as if it was a one liter bottle of cod-liver oil I had to gobble down before I was allowed to go on with the rest of my life, maybe.
Because my first priority would be to talk about the finished project, and guide it into the world like a baby taking its first steps. You can’t build an audience and a following unless you’re available to talk about the finished product!
But I didn’t want that cod-liver oil…. I didn’t want fame, or money. I didn’t even want to help anyone. I just wanted my life back!
And Sara?
My bold and beautiful creativity coach?
She GOT that!
She has understood a long time ago, that although I use guides myself (hiring coaching at critical stages of my life or business) I AM not a coach myself.
I am an artist.
I’m also an inspirator, an energizer, an uplifter.
YES!
I can build you up, just like those models. Using some tools and frameworks that we can ultimately take out, because they’re no longer needed.
That’s when you are standing on top of the mountain, and you spread your wings.
And you can fly.
We will both delighted at how magnificent you have become.
But I’m only good with people who know they want to fly. Who are CONVINCED they can fly, and just need someone to show them the hows.
But even all that?
Is not my task as a writer, not as an artist.
Here, I want to express freely.
No wonder I look at all those helpful books I could write, based on everything that I now know, as if they’re a death sentence. The thought of creating a book on a subject that I have outgrown, is almost blasphemy.
And then I saw it!
“Sara! It just hit me! I know what it is!”
I yelled into our Zoom connection, excitedly jumping up and down my chair.
“I know the answer, I really do!”
When we started working together, Sara made me fill out a creative framework
and it brought up the most peculiar result…. at the far end of the creative process.
It was the phase where you share your work with the world.
And although I hit some marks here and there, that would help me to get my work across, I felt the biggest emotional connection to the final personality marker.
The Disruptor.
It is the one who weakens and ultimately destroys existing structures of power or social conventions.
It takes down anything false or redundant.
And contrary to a guide a Disruptor leaves chaos and doesn’t offer any solutions. His gift is that he releases you from the lies you’ve been living in.
“It’s just like what Alexander Mc.Queen said about his fashion shows, Sara!”
He had defended his bloody, misogynistic fashion shows with titles like “Jack the Ripper stalks his victims” and “Highland Rape” by stating:
I don’t want you to walk out feeling you’ve just had Sunday lunch!
I want you to be repulsed or exhilarated. As long as it’s an emotion.
“Sara, that’s my final stage of a project!
It’s a show, a one-off thing.
It’s where I speak my whole truth and in the process blow everything up!”
So that there will be a void, from which new life, new art, will be born again.

NB: within an hour after my call with Sara, I offered The Mistress a place behind my desk. I asked her to tell us everything she knows.
And to not spare us.
A Mistress Speaks.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

Mindset Yoga: de echte life makeover (Nijmegen)

NEW connect on Linkedin

Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary, and The Mistress Speaks, is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

Live to tell is the twenty-fifth 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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

99.9% of men don’t have a mistress | The Mistress Speaks episode 1

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Oh finally, she lets me speak?    
Now that LS Harteveld has stopped writing her diary because due to recent events, there was just no way she could keep sharing her love life without jeopardizing the secret identity of her lover?      
Or perhaps future lovers, plural.             
Because whoever believed men could restrain themselves, right?
I certainly don’t.            

What a woman wants a woman gets. Even when she pulls herself out of the erotically charged equation, God will find a way to put the two of you together.             
Or the three of you.       
So that he or she can lean back with a bowl of popcorn and watch the show of you seeing Life take over your perfectly rationalized way out of passion. 
When was that ever going to work.         

We’re talking about the second strongest power in the human body.
The only thing stronger than sexual power, is your ability to kill and commit monstrous crimes (or are they really?) in order to stay alive.
Perhaps this rules vegans out from being successful cheaters.     
I’ve never met a vegan with a mistress, so I wouldn’t know. But if you want to have a mistress and enjoy it? You must be able put your will to live above that of someone else – before you can put your own pleasure over someone else’s jealousy.            
And to not be consumed by guilt, afterwards.     

But being vegan or otherwise overly responsible is really not the only sign your husband is NOT a cheater.         
That is the insane thing; When women meet me, they immediately assume I’m after their man, married men in general. Or that I am against the entire system of marriage.      
Not true.           

First of all, the system of marriage works brilliantly as an economic and emotional treaty where you can accomplish way more things as a team than you can on your own.    
Depending on your economic and emotional needs and wants, you will be susceptible to the idea of joining forces.
Problems arise when one of the two parties thinks they will have bigger benefits (again whether economically or emotionally) if they team up with someone else.   
Then a mistress-cheater situation can exist as stepping stone to a new marriage.
Although I am a mistress, this situation is not my territory.         

These mistresses, who are after a monogamous relationship with this man, should be the threatening ones, the homewreckers.        
It are messy, temporary situations where a man is involved with two women who both want a serious monogamous relationship with him. It makes sense that in this setup the last one joining a.k.a. the mistress, has to be the enemy.

And yet? Ironically?      
I think that although these women are threatening to existing relationships, I feel that they are not the ones that have given mistresses a bad name.     
These homewreckers are not what scares married women, because they are after the same thing they once were.  It’s hard not to sympathize with them at some level.        

No, what triggers women is that I, a mistress, do not prey on their husband. That I will “only” be the one he has the best sex of his life with, and there isn’t a goddamn thing they can do about it.   

Let’s assume I’m right. 
That it is the “real” mistress that infuriates them, and not the one by default.
Then my existence is irrelevant for 99.9% of the marriages, because most husbands are unfit to have a mistress. They’re not interested nor capable of investing that much time and wooing, not in risking their entire life and marriage, and so on.     

Statistically speaking, there is no reason for married women to get upset about real mistresses like me.
Because most men can’t be bothered, or they don’t have the confidence.
And this is great news because no mistress can turn your man into someone who goes out there, takes life by the balls, and spontaneously starts to play chess like a Pro, on two different boards at the same time. 
It’s just not possible.     

If you’re a married woman, and you’re reading this, and you are wondering if your husband would, could, has? Then I have fantastic news.
Because either he didn’t.            
OR
He did and therefor belongs to the one percent within the one percent who can actually pull that off. Which makes him a great catch in his own right.             
HOWEVER  – and this is important – IF you think your relationship has gone from bad to worse a long time ago, and he’s not giving you attention, and things are sour?!           
Then please; Address those issues in their own right.      
Go save your marriage, get therapy, have a heart to heart, but leave cheating out of it. Either he is or he isn’t, it is really none of your business. In particular if your marriage has not been doing well.
Make sure it starts doing well again, or make a decision to leave him.

Him cheating can exist within a great marriage.
And him being faithful doesn’t necessarily make a good husband.

I’ve already talked too long. What can I say? Few will let me talk, and my frustration just bubbles up from inside of me.    
Maybe that’s something I can close with:            
Frustration is very unsexy and toxic. And it’s what happens if you focus on the stuff that you can’t control.        
Like me.

~The Mistress

The Mistress Speaks has been published in 2021.
You can find her here in the bookstore.

.
about “GLOW-UP 2026”

In January, Google has started pushing my old posts.
Unfortunately, my website was one of many casualties of WordPress Gugenheim software updates.
Meaning the layout of this post was completely destroyed and none of the new visitors was able to read it.

Therefor I have decided to run by all my old posts, starting with the ones currently in rotation, and give them a well-deserved update that will do what glow-ups are supposed to do;
Make them better.

—
Subscribe to this blog, and receive my current work.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Papa don’t preach

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Lauren has grown tired of her badass mistress act, and comfortably snuggles into her new image of the girl next door. Just in time to give that exciting persona back to its rightful owner! 

On my second night at the same bar – accidentally two friends had asked me on a date – the bartender brought me (underscore me!) my cutlery for my (underscore my!) pizza, and apologized:
“I don’t dare to place a second set of cutlery on your table.”
Like many bars, it had been under the impression that people enjoyed sharing food.
Which I didn’t.
On the first night, when serving the pizza, the waiter had said my pizza tasted so good, I should give a piece to my friend. And then my friend could let me taste from her dish.
I looked at him, jaw dropping, and said:
“Anybody who knows me – even remotely – knows I don’t share food.”
He had gotten the message, obviously.
The funny thing is that at the end of this second night, he said:
“See you tomorrow!”
“Noooo! Tomorrow I really won’t be here! This was just a coincidence.”
But a third friend just texted me, if I could make it tonight!
So I ll be going for my third pizza within an hour.
The reason I absolutely didn’t plan on going out tonight, was because I already had my social life covered for today. I had a date with someone I had met through social media.
This is what I thought she would be like:
At least fifteen years younger than me.
Extremely shy or perhaps autistic.
Looking up to me.
The only thing I knew for sure was that she was highly intelligent.
This is how she really was:
My age.
She threw herself at me with a kiss, apologizing:
“I m sorry, I m a hugger.”
She was the most worldly, easy going and exciting woman you could possibly imagine. And her ideas were A-MA-ZING!
I used to have a friend who was at the same level of awesomeness, but she drifted out of my life years ago. Saving the world on another continent.
This new friend made me just want to suck up every word she spoke. Her entire energy, everything.
I suddenly felt how thirsty I had been to be in the company of someone like her.
Someone like me, in the sense that she is charismatic (oh yes- I will give myself that credit!) but who actually has a life to back that shit up.
Here’s my life:
Living alone with cat, anti-social, hates to leave the house.
Here’s her life:
You try to pin that down, and you just lost.
She’s one of those people who can’t be bothered with material possessions or the safety of a relationship, and who’s on the verge of turning her whole life upside down. Always.
We did share a love for “bad” boys;
Men who seemed to have escaped from the Dutch habit of becoming completely docile in the company of their partner. I told her about a foreign girl I used to know, who had spent two years here for her studies.
She only knew three Dutch words:
Onder de plak.
Which means something like henpecked, or whipped.
And she had been totally disgusted by seeing her foreign male friends “turn” onder de plak as well!
I told my new friend that my lover wasn’t anything like that. That he bothers to defend himself, and immediately understands when he is being manipulated.
You see, I don’t like to boss around, or project my fears onto him, or anything. But sometimes I slip, and something leaves my mouth that I immediately regret.
It’s so wonderful to then “have” a man (ha! you never have these men of course!) who responds like he just got stung and immediately calls you out on it:
“Hey! Stop that!”
Foreign women, on the other hand, were usually delighted with Dutch men! Who made reliable, peaceful householders.
And my new friend and me wondered if we could trade them.
Our Dutch men to the Mediterranean countries and South America. Where they would make fantastic husbands.
And invite their bad boys to come live here with us, where they would be appreciated for their exotic, Don Juan nature.
On our way home to the station we touched on the subject of my submissiveness in bed: something she had a good laugh about.
Especially when I said I didn’t like to have normal sex where “all these things are expected of me.”
I wanted to surrender completely, and be possessed and dominated. I didn’t want any responsibility.
And she explained to me, that was probably why I had such strong boundaries. Because indeed, we had shared multiple stories (non sexual) where in the exact same situation, she had had a go-with-the-flow attitude;
And I had pushed back and successfully claimed a position of power.
The pleasure I got in the bedroom, from submitting fully to a lover, could only exist because I defended my boundaries in real life, with iron fist.
I complimented the waiter, that he had remembered that I was going to eat the pizza by myself.
He said:
“Sure. Like in Friends. Joey doesn’t share food.”

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

Mindset Yoga: de echte life makeover (Nijmegen)

NEW connect on Linkedin

Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

Papa don’t preach is the twenty-fourth 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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

True Blue

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

“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.

Life really was that simple.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

Mindset Yoga: de echte life makeover (Nijmegen)

NEW connect on Linkedin

Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Into the Groove | Kickstarting my new life!

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

Mindset Yoga: de echte life makeover (Nijmegen)

NEW connect on Linkedin

Into the Groove is the twenty-second chapter from Project M. 
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

Dress you up

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

NEW connect on Linkedin

Dress you up is the twenty-first chapter from Project M. 
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

 

Like a Virgin

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.”

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

NEW connect on Linkedin

Like a Virgin is the twentieth chapter from Project M. 
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

 

Shoo bee doo

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

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.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

NEW connect on Linkedin

Shoo bee doo is the nineteenth chapter from Project M. 
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.

 

Love don’t live here anymore

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
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.

<3LSH
An unexamined life is not worth living

NEW connect on Linkedin

Love don’t live here anymore is the eighteenth chapter from Project M. 
Want to know what happens next?
The subscribe button to this diary is somewhere on the right.
or follow Twitter ; or Facebook

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.

Als je Nederlands bent is 22 erotische verhalen een aanrader.
Maar je kunt natuurlijk ook gewoon de hele shop leegkopen.

BOOK SHOP

These are my English titles:
Dutch American Diary 2008-2009  €15
LS Diary 2012-2013                                € 10
Bedtime Stories 2014                            €15
Mirage 2014                                               €5
Big, diaries and erotica 2015-2016 € 20
Get a 25% discount on all prices in the shop.
Select your store f.e. Nederland or United States
with the flag in the upper right corner.