LS Harteveld

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This transcended sex;
Perhaps even to art.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sold!

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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

It took months, before we finally introduced ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Build to lead and to withstand any storm.

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

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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

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

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

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

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

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

I got you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or a lot.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

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