I can’t allow myself to care

Published on by LS Harteveld
Breakup scene from Basic Instinct. In a later scene Catherine Tramell explains her actions saying “I can’t allow myself to care about you. I can’t allow myself to care.”

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

It is not an easy time, and yet technically it is by far the easiest is has been in years.
The euphoria from last summer has not made it into the new season, and the last two weeks were even marked by a darkness that I was no longer familiar with.
It feels like I should be doing some mending, some reconnecting to the insights I had this summer which I wrote down, particularly for times like this.
So why am I not?
I do not know.

I am typing this, and the answers present themselves immediately though, I notice. 
That there is no not knowing of any sorts!
That I know exactly why I am so apathic;
Because my new businesses are not based on writing or blogging. If I were fully booked I would have zero time to write, and only an hour a day for marketing related writing.
And LS Harteveld is not included in my workhours either.

My new businesses are great in theory! I have things to sell, I feel professional, and they’re real businesses.
And it feels like a thin line (meaning they feel similar) between writing something to build an audience ->for a business<- and writing to build an audience period.
Or even simply “and writing *point*”.

The number of hours necessary to write an article, in particular when research is involved, which it almost always is;
There is just no way of justifying that from the purpose of building a business.

But I think my lethargy and my absolute obsession to squeeze all my business duties within a 40 hour workweek- and that is including social hours, because I need 3 hours a day, every day, for housekeeping, my duties for the neighborhood animals and yoga.
During summer when I was on my high, I let my whole self-care fall by the wayside (I did care for the animals!), and I felt so absolutely horrific about not being in touch with my body, nor with my house.
It was a mess!

Okay, I have no idea at which point of the story I am right now, to be honest.
But suffice to say, that as brilliant as I felt about finally understanding what my new businesses were going to be, I dread the execution now that we’re in THAT stage.
I dread anything, that is NOT me writing.

AND living a life worth writing about!

So the answer to how I can feel better is by stepping into my WRITER boots,  and my storyteller boots, more firmly, and letting the business side just take care of itself.
I have a business, but I am not the business.
I am a writer.

So that bit is solved I think.
But there is another dullness inside of me. A numb feeling where I would expect light and happiness, because I have come so far!
It’s about sex and men and letting go of the idea that I need a man in my life. Just the thought of spending a minute searching, dating or in any way investing, in the process of finding a new lover?
No way!

It probably happened at exactly the same moment when I mapped out my roster of maximum client hours, and needing 3 hours a day for myself to feel human;
And realizing there was no time for writing.

From there it was a very easy choice to accepting I will never invest in men again, and that the Lord will just have to organize them appearing at my doorstep, or on my Timeline, because that’s the furthest I’m willing to travel.

It felt incredibly mature to let this desire for a new lover go.
And either way, I had little time to think about it because I was fighting tooth and nail for time in my schedule to WRITE.
Something had to give, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be my last chance at writing something beyond the 2200 character Instagram limit.

To not let my whole sexuality dry out, the desire for men was replaced with the resolution to nurture and develop my femininity, my receptivity.
Including healing massages, a cleaned up diet, and a peaceful energy. 

But there was also a deliberate intention, a vision of developing a feminine business, where the love and effort I once reserved for men, was now gently directed to more profitable waters.
Where every word was written for the world, not for him (whomever he may be).

Emails are for romantics.
Femme biz owners write for the world, and I intended to live according to this rule religiously.

Until I stopped feeling and a dullness set in.
And I m not even curious to what I wrote down last summer to protect my inner-light, although I do remember that I said to myself I needed to start treating writing as a business too.
That that was the only way to make it a priority… And I know I have not done that. I have treated writing like a luxury after a 40 hour workweek.

In the movie Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell breaks up with detective Nick Curran, after she has finished writing the book about the detective. That same night she returns to him, after she learns from the news that his partner has been murdered.
“I can’t allow myself to care about you,” she explains the breakup.
“I can’t allow myself to care.” 

That resembles how I feel the closest:
I have broken up with my writing, by planning my whole week about making money like a normal person. Just like Catherine disposed of Nick when he was no longer necessary to write her novel, because it was finished.

Nick enters his apartment after a horrific day where first his lover has broken up with him, then his partner gets murdered, then he shoots his other lover the psychiatrist because he thinks she has a gun and has killed his partner;
Then he finds out she’s only holding a set of keys.
Then the police find out the psychiatrist was actually the killer, Nick is cleared of all charges and free to go.

He opens the door to his apartment and walks in, not even bothering to turn on the lights.
“Hi,” Catherine says, from the shadows. She has been waiting for him.
“I heard about what happened. On TV.”
Nick nods his head, his face is dark with grief.
“I can’t allow myself to care about you,” Catherine says. “I can’t allow myself, to care.”
“I don’t want to do this,” she starts pacing the room, frantically. “I lose everybody. I don’t want to lose you.”
He steps towards her and holds the sobbing Catherine close to him.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she repeats.

He doesn’t answer, but the love-making that follows shows his answer:
She’s not gonna lose him.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

Someone I had not seen since the 20th century has returned

Published on by LS Harteveld
Sharon Stone. Outfit dates photo during filming Basic Instinct, 1991.

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

To compensate for my click bait title and those cheesy posts where they drag-on-and-on about what you think first the post is about;
Only to then in the final sentence “reveal” that it was about something rather dull;
It is dull!
Because the 20th century person who has returned from the title is not a lover.

It is Me!

The real me. The one I lost in the 20th century, and recently tied finding her to my project of living in 1998. A project which I have been on-and-off doing since 1994 = 2019.
Well it worked!
Found her!

Same for a project I started since our last conversation, which is to study the Femme Fatale and get a better understanding of the rules behind Sharon Stone’s character Catherine Tramell, in Basic Instinct.
What makes Catherine Tramell so omnipotent?
I was certain that cracking that code, would provide insights still valuable today.
And I hoped that the study of the magic of the Femme Fatale would reboot my sex and love life, and snap me back into actually having one!
Because by the looks of it, I don’t have a sex life

Something that would have worried me, if I had not been so incredibly happy this summer.
Who needs a sex life when apparently, you can have the best summer in 25 years without leaving the house or taking your clothes off!

Literally (as in: concerning the amount I will write about it, and the intensity of the content) it is a shame that the Femme Fatale “clicked” in me, shortly after writing the first episode of the series.
But for the personal intention this project had, it is great news of course.
I am not turning into a Femme Fatale though! Like I said, I found the real Me back.

So although I now have a perfect understanding why my favorite playtime will always be to be a Femme Fatale, or a Dark Femme;
Why I will always long for men who like to play that game with me;
And why I will never burn myself on anything even remotely resembling a normal relationship where my freedom and growth are under threat, and I will VERY happily let him go to do that with other women.

Yet I am not not, a Femme Fatale.
For the first time in over 20 years, I am Me.

So as far as that time frame is still applicable “without further ado”, I will tell you what I found.
No real system, I will stick to “loose” terms, because the past five years I have done so much thinking, the last thing I want is to think even more and formalize what I found.
I’m not a psycho-analyst or researcher, I’m a storyteller. 

So what I found, studying what on YouTube is called the “dark femme” or the “femme fatale”, is that although she has incredible powers, the power she holds is not male!
She has power over men, but she is not a man.
In fact her power comes from being more feminine than what we would consider normal women.
The Femme Fatale does less, not more.
The Femme Fatale holds back, so that he can lean forward.
A Femme Fatale is that unavailable woman so that he needs to REACH and grow, to get to where she is.

In other words, the reason the Femme Fatale is so successful with men, is because the only way they can be with her is if he rises to her level.
So he is forced to become the strong, independent, dominant man he desires to be.

Where a damsel in distress makes men feel good because they can be their heros and protectors;
A Femme Fatale makes a man, who has it in him to rise to her level but just needed a little nudge; she makes him feel better than any other woman can or ever will, because she is the one who has forced him to rise above himself.
And without using any force, but by creating distance.

She has created, a demand.

Now there are of course many “The Rules”-like approaches, and multiple female archetypes who use this technique, yet the Femme Fatale the way I see her, and the way Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct operated, is that she is the only one of the bunch for whom their play is the reward.

The chase is a one-off play, for many female archetypes. They do it in the courting stages of a relationship, but change to a less exciting way of being together later.
But for the dark femme/ femme fatale, playing is a way of life!
She does that, with the same men or multiple, on repeat.
She is only in it, for the game.

A Dark Femme/ Femme Fatale the way I see her, as well as the only man she will ever consider her equal, appear to be both what Jung called the archetype The Lover.
Both men and women can have this archetype dominant.

So not only does this solidify what my love life will always be like, and what kind of man I will always date and all the other archetypes will always be way too serious;
But it also revealed what the f* went so horribly wrong around the turn of the century!

It was never my male side that I lost.
I mean yes, when my father died something inside me shifted, which was even worsened by entering the yoga teaching world around the same time.
I went from being in a masculine world of engineers, to being fatherless in a woman’s world.

And to this day I will defend tooth and nail that any independent, including any professional yoga teacher, first and foremost needs to start seeing themselves as a business and fall in love with selling as a way of making connection!
It is borderline irresponsible to train professionals without sharpening their skills to become good business people. 
So yes, feeling the masculine is being swept from underneath of you, when you’re a professional in her 20s, is bad!
Very, very bad.

But that was not the greatest loss in general, and in particular that was not the biggest character or personality shift inside of me that caused my misery.

The biggest loss was that I loss my feminine power.

My father was a strong and dominant man. But he was full of unconditional, beautiful and clear love for me, and he expressed it in deep conversation. 
In supporting my education.
And in paying anything he thought I needed in life, he was a huge giver!

And I?
I was an amazing receiver.

I have made gestures telling the story of my youth, with my arms up in a V! Ready to receive everything he wanted to provide, with the same joy he had giving it.

And it was that power, that quality, I lost.

As small and inexperienced as I was, I brought out the best in my father. He made sure there would always be ample money to support our family, and he made sure I knew his door was always open.
Years after he died, I heard from one of his few female friends how he had counseled her, how he could spelling check the English in the thesis I had given him for proofreading, in a supportive way.

My father went through lengths, to be the best father he could possibly be. And I was there receiving.

It was this receiving quality, I lost.

And my desire for “Rock Star strength and presence”- Rock Star being a word that resonated with me since 2019 and that has been instrumental in finding my way back! – I had missed one super big cue! 

My strength is not the performance and extraversion, it is not to have the strength and size and visibility of being a Rock Star.
And what I lost around the turn of the century was not my ability to be a Rock Star.

What I lost, and now have found, was my ability to awaken someone’s true strength, reveal their most vibrant truths and to unleash their biggest potential.

I was never a Rock Star;
I created them.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

“I know who you are. How did he die?” | The Way of the Femme Fatale. Lesson 1 to 4

Published on by LS Harteveld
source: Basic Instinct (1992)

“I know who you are,” the young woman said evenly.
She wouldn’t or didn’t want to meet their gaze.
She looked at the water as if deriving composure from its tumult.
“How did he die?”

from page 23, Basic Instinct, Richard Osborne 

.
Introduction to this series

Welcome reader.
I am studying the wisdom and lifestyle of the Femme Fatale, because this has been the closest to the lifestyle I have chosen.

The Femme Fatale stands for being a solitary, sexually active woman, who sees the men in her life as equals and the relationship, friendship or affair as playtime, where they challenge each other.

I will investigate the lessons of this archetype using the movie Basic Instinct. This series will contain spoilers, and will probably also be incomprehensible if you have not seen the movie.

I have no idea how long this series will be.

My ultimate goal is to rewrite it and publish the lessons as a short manifesto.

But until then this series will be the long-form version of the lives and loves, of The Femme Fatale.

.
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk

.
Over the years I wrote many things about Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell. But despite three decades of conclusions in the media, that Catherine Tramell was the killer;
The only thing I have found her guilty of is that she refuses to engage in small talk.

She’ll do jokes, she’ll do irony, she’ll do sarcasm and she will not hide her intelligence.
She will overtake another car in a curvy road, driving at full speed next to a cliff, and she has convicted murderers as friends;
But she does does not engage in conversation without substance.

For Catherine, interaction is a game that can only be played with people who raise the stakes together with her.
People who immediately understand life is too short to play it safe.

But I am getting ahead of myself, because that last bit, about the Femme Fatale or Catherine Tramell, having an actual connection to life being short, and the inevitability of death?
I didn’t realize that.
Not until yesterday.

.
lesson 2: play with death

.
Yesterday, I wrote the post “Why Femmes Fatale are so powerful“
And the Why, is because they are not afraid of death, and train themselves to be in its presence.
Catherine’s reckless driving and choice of company, are not just signs of how powerful she is;
They are the reason she has that power.

She trains herself to never be afraid.

Catherine acknowledges fear of any kind takes away your autonomy and that if you want to play life at the level she does, you have no other choice but to overcome them.
And this will automatically influence your desire for small talk (lesson one), because the purpose of small talk is to give yourself and the other a sense of safety.
Which contradicts the unspoken rule that she, as well as detective Nick Curran, and also other femme fatales live by;
That we are all responsible for conquering our own fears.
Including our fear of death, our fear of being rejected, our fear of being excluded, our fear of not belonging, our fear of being outcast.
Our fear of being thrown into jail.

And the perfect way to train that, is to refrain from small talk, in particular in situations where the other person has more power than you do.

Small talk and social skills are functional if you need them to survive. But applied habitually without being mindful of what your endgame is, small talk and being social become a cover up of a deep existential fear that no spiritual practitioner will want to miss out on.

Learning to be with someone without small talk, is a spiritual practice much like meditating is.

.
lesson 3: Treat Fear as an obligation to rise

.
Femme Fatales and those playing at her level, can distinguish between good and bad, and desirable and undesirable.
But they also recognize that before acting, before doing anything about it or doing something in pursuit of getting it;
The fear to never be able to attain a certain outcome,
or the fear to suffer a certain loss or doom,
must be met first.

“the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

The Femme Fatale notices fear (of rejection, of loneliness, of poverty) and recognizes her first job is to accept all realities that might happen.
And being okay with it.

Just like a player in sports, she must keep her cool in order to play her best game.

.
.
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

.
On the deck of Stinson Beach, overlooking the ocean, Catherine Tramell disempowers the two detectives by not being moved by their presence, nor by the news that her lover has been murdered.

In a later scene in the police station she does the same thing with a whole team interrogating her.
Leaning back into her chair, not hiding behind a lawyer, she tells a completely transparent story, taking away all their intimidating power and instead making them uncomfortable.

But to Gus, Nick Curran’s partner, she cheerfully says “Hi Gus.”
Even when she has just asked Nick:
“Why doesn’t Gus like me?”
To which Nick has replied:
“I like you.”
“You do?” she asks.
“Yes. Do you want to go upstairs and have a drink?” 
“I didn’t think you’d ask me.”

And it is after the following scene in Nick’s apartment that she walks down the stairs, cheerfully greeting Gus as he comes up, carrying pizzas.

Catherine has not complained to Nick about lack of warmth coming from his best friend. Being cold-shouldered by Gus was merely an interesting conversation topic to her.

This illustrates Catherine only plays with those who have moved themselves into the game with her. She respects that Gus wants to keep to himself and does not hold grudges.

.
lesson 1-4: recap and practice

..

Catherine’s opening scene reveals lesson one to three, which are all related:
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk
lesson 2: play with death
lesson 3: treat fear as an obligation to rise

Small talk and the larger desire to be part of a community, is how we cover up fears, including our fear of dying. 
Being a Femme Fatale means understanding you must be completely okay with death, isolation, loneliness, pain;
Before you act and do anything to prevent it.

The coolness Catherine displays in the opening scene, displays a mastery of the deepest and most primal of human emotions.
It displays, what we all know under the term:
Enlightenment.

And the scene in Nick’s staircase where she stays polite to Gus, gives us number four:
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

Catherine is kind to Gus, and also to her two friends who are both convicted of murder; Roxy and Hazel Dobkins.
There is no judgement of Gus’ choice to not like her, nor is there judgement over her friends being murderers.

Whether she is with friends or foes;
Catherine is transparent, open, and unjudgmental.

Her dominant spiritual practice is to be at ease, whatever happens.

It is that which she has trained, and it is that what we can learn from her.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for The Way of the Femme Fatale, for my letters to Sara and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

Why Femmes Fatale are so powerful

Published on by LS Harteveld
Source: sponsored ad from an IG account called manifest.affirmation.app

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

There were plenty of titles to choose from for this post, and all would have been a great fit.

“I don’t need six months to reappear a Dark Femme”
or
“Being Catherine Tramell: part deux”,
a follow up to an earlier post on this blog about Basic Instinct’s omnipotent female writer protagonist (many would say antagonist) who was described by the director Paul Verhoeven himself, as being all-knowing and as possessing supernatural powers because she was the devil.

Or the title could be:
“A year to live like a Femme Fatale”
– as a follow up from the post I wrote you three weeks ago, in this same blog:
“A year for my essential self to play major league and major league only and come up with catchier project titles“

Isn’t it ironic that three weeks ago, I knew the direction of what I wanted
– to be my true self and play what I call “Major League”-
but was also annoyingly aware I was lacking a catchy title?
When now everything fits like a black over-the-elbow-glove?

It is a symbol of how it was indeed an umbrella term or idea, the thing that would hold it all together, that was missing.
Why I could understand the content of my vision for myself, but did not have a catch phrase.

It’s like being pregnant but not having seen your child yet.
I’ve heard from many mothers they did not know the essence of who their child was, until it was born. Then they realized how “wrong” they had been, how many things they had thought they knew about them, which had actually been assumptions.
The child had been unable to show their mother who they were, as long as they were still inside.

Three weeks ago, my year long project was still inside of me.
I thought I knew what it was, because I had such an intimate relationship to it. But as I know now, it is actually quite possible to have an intimate relationship with something you do not know at all.

In fact, looking back at my three decades of fascination with the omnipotent writer Catherine Tramell from the movie Basic Instinct, and her game-of-equals with her love interest Nick, played by Michael Douglas, it is quite a surprise what I am about to tell you took me this long!

What I am about to tell you, is a big case of:
“How did I manage to miss this?”

It all started a couple of weeks back, when I saw an advertisement for a personality test that portrayed as a how-to become a “Dark Femme”.
I remember clicking the link, and being annoyed it was a test that ended up including about 8 or so personalities, and I was not the Dark Femme.

But the biggest turn-off was that it was aimed at, you know, “getting your man”, that kind of thing.
Something I have never been interested in.

Just for your point of reference: I have no idea what my lover has been up to, but I feel he’s in a good place, and he’s having a good year.
I’m sure he’ll be “back” at some point in time, because like Nick and Catherine, we had just such a deep understanding of who the other was.
There was so much love, and joy, and respect, and fun.
I’m not calling it coming “back” to me, because that suggests he’s not having fun now, or that he made the wrong choice.

If there is anything I know it’s that if you want to have a relationship based on equality, any relationship, you need to start trusting the other person to live their own life.
I trust him to be doing exactly the right thing!
Even if it would mean I would never see him again.

There is zero tendency or desire within me to influence it, if anything I “push” him away, by never faking a disinterest or an unavailability.
I never play the game of moving out of his life, if he fails to do this, or return to me by whatever.
I am much more interested in seeing him return, without giving him any reason to do so.
Because then I know he’s really back to play;)

So ultimately it was the underlying tone of playing a man to make him choose you, that disappointed me in the company behind the Dark Femme advertisements.
And I’m not 100% sure it’s the same company, as the one from the screen shot advertisement, used in this post.
I clicked and did that test weeks ago, maybe even two months ago.
But when I saw the (or “this”) advertisement, I was reminded of clicking that or a similar advertisement weeks ago, and made a screen shot because I had not “let go” of this Dark Femme idea!
If anything, in the weeks in between the idea within me had strengthened that I was missing some Dark Femme cues to life.
Cues far more important and far-reaching, than getting a man to call you.

And since then I have done my research, and I now know:
-what gives this femme her power
-which is the same thing I was intrigued by in Catherine Tramell as well as in Nick Curran (Michael Douglas). It is this thing, that binds them.
-why I developed an aids-phobia in the 80s, later relabeled by me as a social-phobia, because it was being expelled and unloved that I feared. Not death.
-why during the pandemic, social interactions became unbearable to me. I felt I had to comfort an unnamed fear, on both sides of the polarized pandemic spectrum and anything in between, before we could have a conversation.
-why these heavy 2020-2022 interactions were a magnified version of “work” I had been feeling I had to do, ever since I became a yoga teacher.
I felt I was paid or expected to comfort something, to put a blanket over something very painful, before yoga could begin.

And I couldn’t really pinpoint what it was exactly;
There were times when I was sure this unnamed work, soothing, or pampering, had something to do with having to cater to someone’s ego.
But during the pandemic it felt more like having to put the blanket over a sincere fear of illness, or a sincere fear of loss of freedom (other side of the spectrum).
After about two years, I finally understood what the criterium was within Dutch pandemic strategies;
They were all designed to give most people the impression something was being done. 
There was literally no other criterium for Dutch pandemic measures, everything could be brought back to this.
F.e. deaths were only a problem, if they caused people to feel that not enough was being done.
Deaths counted in the media were a problem.
Silent suffering, of any kind, was not.

Perhaps by now you know what I found out;
The reason social interaction is such a minefield, is because what people are facing is their own death.
That, is what you are veneering, comforting, framing, softening, coaching, and whispering them through.
That is the work, you are doing, in social interaction.

Someone’s ego can take over, and start compensating or self-comforting, a fear of death. That is why for so long, I thought the ego was involved.
But it is much deeper.

And it is here, where the omnipotent taps in deeply.

What binds them all, what gives the Dark Femme, the Femme Fatale, Catherine Tramell, Michael Douglas, my lover, and me, our power;
Why we can navigate through layers and through worlds, and why we can choose to play in the Major League of dating and sex, without even the slightest interest of following someone who walks off the field to go do other things;
Is not because we followed an Instagram advertisement of how to become a Dark Femme.

Each and every one of us, overcame our fear of death.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

A year for my essential self to play major league and major league only and come up with catchier project titles

Published on by LS Harteveld
Sex and the City Mr.Big and Carrie

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

Our next one is of course:
The Biggie!
A call to kick off my new year, and speak to you on my birthday, as I always wanted it to be.
My birthday is going to be introvert’s heaven, with an intimate lunch at a high level place that immediately shifts my mood!
And then our call.

A call which I wanted to prepare with vigor, but the theme of “new year”  and “birthday call” had a way of preparing all by itself, and in the end all I need to do is write it down.
In 50 minutes, because my weekend is so packed, and I already had to cancel things because I just couldn’t do all of it.
But I don’t think I need 50 minutes.

Because I have set my eyes on living one year according to my “Essential self”.
If the Social Self is the aspect we all need because we live in a society and to a degree have to conform in order to belong to a bigger community, then the essential self is the part of us that is truly us, and that does not belong to anyone except to itself.

I had an understanding that I spent the past 20 years cultivating the social self, in particular as a yoga teacher, and that now that I am setting up my career(s) again;
All I basically did was take the concept of Social Self, and put a price tag on it.

I have felt so totally not-me the past 20 years, and in particular the last 10, that my real name became synonym for an empty shell that I inhabited.
“I” never belonged.
Maybe my empty shell did.

And the only thing I did differently with my new companies, is understanding that my empty shell was way more interesting as a vehicle for monetization, than as a vehicle of acceptance and belonging.
I’ll go be rich and alone, instead of squeezing myself within the tiny margin you can allow for me to make a living and still be part of society.

Now, I already knew that emotionally separating myself from the person I was going to be four to seven days a week, and that taking time off meant:
Be Lauren Harteveld.
The alterego, that I identified as my real self-
I knew that was probably not the most holistic approach.
That cutting yourself in two, in particular if you view one half as an empty suit you just put on to make money, was not wholesome.

Even when- and I knew this is what happens- “the actual work of the shell” is really, the real self.
My clients and my yoga students, of course they get the real me!!!
So the separation was far less extreme than it was in my head.

But the reason I have a profession that is local or national, is to have a profession that gives you a place, in the society at large.
Being an international online entrepreneur does not make me a relatable person, in the Netherlands.
So the empty-shell profession, the front, was really needed and in that sense the “I” under my real name, was not a real person.
It was a construct, to get around.

And me thinking about “On which days am I “her”? On which days am I real? (Lauren Harteveld)”;
That was me trying to perfect it.
Trying to cut it in half, permanently.

Only to realize Lauren Harteveld does not have a community. She does not have belonging. She has a few friends, for sure, but they are not part of her daily life and her/my lover is currently outside of my energetic circle.
I have no idea when he will come back, and if he does, with what message.

Will the dance begin again?!
I hope so.
But I can’t count on it.

And out of ALL of that, all those thoughts, and me standing with the scalpel in hand to cut the real me out of the empty shell I apparently needed to be to fit in and be relatable;
An anger arose.

And I remember the other times in my life I was this angry, and have a better understanding now of Why!
And Where that anger comes from!

It is anger that is reserved for situations where I am put on the spot to comply, to say I am sorry, in order to belong, and to be accepted or welcomed back in.

Sara, what I felt I can only describe as the biggest, hardest, loudest, fuck you I have ever felt in my whole life.
And I took ALL of that energy back, and of course I am not going to cut myself out of an empty shell persona, and leave my Name and Identity as a monetizable shell.
That is ME you’re talking about!

I took my FULL identity back, the WHOLE person, who I still was late 20th century, before the world got their fangs in me, and I started to believe I was somehow responsible for other people’s feelings.

Late 20th century, when I would NEVER have given up my identity in order to belong!
And yet?
I belonged perfectly.

So instead of the empty shell I am claiming full authority of myself, and as myself.
I will say who I am, and WHY I am.

I will tell people of the game I played with my lover, and how every friendship, and every business relationship, and even every family relationship can be played at that level.

It is the level where you are in control of your emotions, and the one who gets triggered loses a point.
But it is also a game everybody loves to play, and there is never a winner.
In a way you are always playing yourself, and you are playing no one. But the game-aspect does bring you back, it makes you “better” at life.
You grow.

The message, my message, is that if we keep each other stuck in the social blame world, in the everything-can-be-present world, we are NEVER going to play LIFE at the level where we are Major League players, like my lover and me were.

We’re never going to be the two little boys talking in their own language, like I have with my best friend for the past 15 years.
Who is a mature woman too, just like me.
But we play, that we are two little boys.

We’re never going to get lost in Star Wars lore, or in Bon Jovi universe, or in the Rock Star badassery of entrepreneurship and creativity.
We’re never going to pretend-play it’s 1998!

Once we settle for battling, discussing, and concerning REALITY, our life is going to be nothing else but an endless stream of long and unpleasant conversations, and ALL the play is lost!

All the hot sex is lost!

And all the badass 20th century women, will get overwhelmed, dissociate from their bodies and identities, and will stop showing up for life altogether.
No one is going to notice if they are actually there, inside their body anyway.

And THAT is what I saw.

So I am going back, to 1998, like my project here on this website has been about for years.
But this time I know WHY I am on this time-travel project.

Because the 20th century was the time I was still a whole person.
I was still my essential self.
I was not split up into an empty shell and an alterego where my soul lived, as I have been living for the past 15 years.

So the upcoming year, will be my year of wholeness, of living under my real name, but also with the alterego identity, they’re both me.
But they are both ALIVE now.

I have a STORY, under both now.

I have POWER, under both now.

But mostly, and more importantly;
I will be playing, under both now.

I am on the field, the field I was once on with my lover. The Major League.
And what I will be teaching, coaching, mentoring, and yoga-ing;
Is that the field exists, and how to play there!

Among your peers.
In the never-ending game, of life.

.
~Lauren

An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

My non-monogamy revealed its biggest lesson

Published on by LS Harteveld
Sex & the City, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr.Big

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I would like to book an extra call, in the upcoming week. For two reasons. One is that we had a 4 week interval planned until the next one, so that I could have it on my birthday, and this was a longer time-frame than usual. 
On second thought, I want the call on my birthday to be an extra one, not a regular one.
So I should have requested another call regardless.

Secondly, I had such a massively profound insight, that I want to mull over with you!
And not on my birthday!
It really feels like I finally understand WHY my relationship with my lover has felt so meaningful. Why it has symbolized everything I value, and why even if I would no longer be seeing him –
the person I became, the person I had to be in that relationship, will last me a lifetime.

But the trick is:
How do I translate those principles and that identity?
How do I manage to be that person, even when the other people in my life, do not have his keeping-it-all-to-himself “Mr.Big” character?
Mr. Big, as I started calling him for my blog, in 2015 when our affair started.

How do I hold my ground as my version of poised, sexy Carry-the-writer (!this profession might be holding part of the clue! Hope we can get back to it!), when I have to play the role of entrepreneur, friend, family member, citizen or even a writer within fandom.

How do I roll out that persona I created with him, the strongest, most fun, most independent, most successful version of me, to the rest of my life?

I found out what it is I do different when in relationship to him. And that it is this exact skill, this carefully crafted trait, that I drop almost immediately, when I step out of “our bubble” and enter normal life!

And not only does it hurt me personally, to be a “Not-Her” version of myself;
But I am convinced that ultimately it also hurts the people around me.
That they too, the world at large even, would be far better off if I behaved in the way I do when I am, or was, with Mr. Big.

Energetically I can feel he’s “Off” towards me, and having a good time. Him and me are on Neutral. Although still full of potential 😉

But being surrounded by the gifts our relationship has brought me, is good company.
And besides I have set the intention to have two lovers, not one.
This time away from each other could be the thing that gives me the space to welcome a new lover.

So the thing I have analyzed that makes me so intensely happy when I am with him, is that he is immune to any pulling, or whining or neediness from my side, whatsoever.
Just like the real Mr.Big from the series.
Immune means that he does not come to the rescue and accommodate whatever there is to accommodate to, so that things get more pleasant for me.

And that is why I have had no other choice than to uplevel to a place where I no longer use pulling or whining or neediness.
A level where we BOTH only show up when we are our radiant, confident selves-
but also a place where if the other slips and does not show up in that form, the other one does not take the bait!

We have gotten so good at this, and have been at this level from almost the very beginning (after the first months of drama, where I figured this out!), that the dynamics have become so strong, so ingrained, that trying to trigger a fight (masculine form of whining) or triggering empathy, has become impossible.
Because even if one of us falls into that behavior of trying to get the other to come over and behave in a different way, “for cheap”, without taking full responsibility for what it is they want;
Then the other will not pick up that ball.
Even when the other does feel the emotional trigger, as we all do, there will be like an intervention on their own feelings, not to respond.

A deep understanding that if we would start responding to each others passive aggressive balls, rolled through the gate of communication, we’re done.
With us, the other will never do the work of comforting, of pampering over your ego, of saying it will be alright;
If you yourself are not able to articulate and propose in a way that leaves room to say No.

You need to ask permission to step through the gate, you have to earn it.
You have to seduce the other, into opening it.
And if any one of us tries to negotiate why they have a right to go through that gate of communication always (solid or real relationship), or if they try to trigger the other person into ending it and closing the gate for good;
The other person does not respond.

But that gate does not stand alone.
It is attached to something;
A castle.

And the castle, with the gate that needs magic words for it to open?
That castle is not something you can enter into, by labeling it this and that.
You can’t say: “we have a relationship” and poof! Castle appears!
No;
This castle was created.

By giants and for giants.

Enter: The secret why I loved being with him so much.
And the reason I still feel so good.
I stepped into my giantess powers in being with him!
And I got to keep that.

What I learned, literally, is to hold the space for a giant, and in order to do that I had to become a giant myself.
Although we do not share assets in a worldly sense, and even though I can no longer feel him at this point, I feel I got to keep the castle! 

So far for the description of how my relationship, my affair, with Mr.Big has unfolded over the years.
And why it has been so much fun, and why I found my true strength, my giant powers, in being with him.
And that I got to keep our energetic real estate.

Now to the other side of the coin, where I seem to lose who I am, and my giant powers are nowhere to be found.
But first how men like Mr.Big are tricked into losing their powers!
Because that, their other side of the coin, has been so easy for me to  see. How they are tricked into giving up their power.

The most popular way to deal with men like Mr.Big is to break them.
There are many cases of even the biggest Don Juan’s, having been tamed “successfully”.
Quotation marks because taming, changing or ruining someone’s personality is a bad thing by definition. Not to mention in this case a total loss.
And the process seems to be irreversible;
Either it doesn’t really stick, and the marriage or relationship strands within a few years and the man falls back into his own behavior which he never gave up in full.
He just wanted to be good and normal, but his woman was unable to create the change he so desired.

But if the change is successful?
If a new relationship, helped by public shame and guilt over his former ways, has him pinned down into being monogamous?
I have not seen anyone bounce back from that.

I do not run such a risk.
Not the risk of being forced into a monogamous relationship, but also not the risk of ending up with a man who does not have other girlfriends.
I know what I need;
And if forced, I would still never settle for a man who does not have other women, but I could make peace with being monogamous myself.
In fact that is my default.
I have not had another man in those 8.5 years, with the exception of one man in the first 18 months. But that was someone who had been my lover already, and for the first two years whenever he visited the Netherlands he would visit me.
Until after two years we found out it didn’t work.
My feelings for Mr.Big were just so overwhelming, and I was so attached to his ways, so attached to him, that the lover for whom I had been willing to migrate just one year prior to meeting Big;
No longer had a place in my life.

Monogamy, for me personally (me seeing other people), is a matter of principle more than practice. The issue at hand being that I do not want to be in a relationship with someone who desires for me to be faithful, or who needs me to be faithful because otherwise his feelings are hurt and he is insecure.
I do not want a man whose self-worth is hanging by the thread of my fedility.
I want a man who desires me to grow, also sexually, so he is forced to up his own game as well.

So although I can see Don Juans falling prey to monogamous relationships where they in my opinion violate the essence of who they are, and are no longer in integrity;
I do not run that risk myself because I don’t feel guilty over not being monogamous, and see non-monogamy as a principle I endorse and live by. For many reasons.

So for the longest time I thought that meant my lesson was “finished”. That I had passed. I had learned and integrated everything there was to learn about my now 8.5 year long affair with Mr.Big and that was the end of it.

Until this new insight that I got, that contrary to most if not all non-monogamous men I know, in the field of love (yes) I do have an A+ in understanding why I resent Monogamy, and I did implement all the lessons I learned!
I will never fall into the monogamy trap, not now not ever.

But what I failed to see is that in practically ALL other relationships- friendship, family, and every and all group settings where I am not the boss of things – I fail, where non-monogamous men do not (credit to them!).

The non-monogamous men, when tamed, still possess their ability to not react and respond to every other thing, and please whomever wants that.
And I fail miserably.

I fail just as spectacularly as those men when they buy into the idea that they can become faithful husbands for the right woman
Sara, I fail like I have NOT, learned ANYTHING!
Just like those Don Juan’s men run into those monogamous relationships like it will save their very soul, that’s how I have behaved.
I’ve been socially all over the place, like my life depended on it.
Like I was a completely different person, than the giant in the castle.

I completely betray myself in these social connections, in a way that would totally repel me in a love relationship.
I am not just a shadow of who I really am; I feel like the qualities that were completely natural and desirable as the Giantess of the Castle, are now only available to me in a mutilated form that even I do not want to touch.

Here is a list of the things I do, I would say “for love”, but it is not love. Here are the things I do because I am displaying socially acceptable behavior, and completely betray who I am.

-I take responsibility for making people feel at ease
-I am emotionally available to hear what people have experienced in their contact with me
-I respond to passive aggressive silences, thinking I have done something wrong, even though I know cold-shouldering should always be ignored as a principle
-I try to find connection where clearly, the other is NOT communicating:
“Hell yes! Would love that!”

WHY Sara?
WHY?

I want my gateway to the world to be set just as tight, as it is in my love life.  And I want to be the giantess EVERYWHERE.

You only get in communication with me, when you take full responsibility for what you want, and you leave space for me to say No.
You never, have a right to go through that gate.
You need to seduce me.

In all those years, I failed to see that it was never the practice of monogamy, I rebelled against;
It is the underlying principle.

It is that two people even NEED the other to be faithful, in order for them to be okay with themselves and feel safe-
it is THAT, that needs addressing.
It is THAT, that I resent.
It is THAT, I will never allow to exist in the area of my love life.

But from now on, it is also THAT, the principle of needing things on an emotional level, from someone else, in order for you to feel safe;
It is THAT work, I no longer want to do.

Ever.

If I need to be someone, or something, in order for that other person to feel loved or seen, or safe?
I should not respond.
The gate should stay closed.

I would like to understand why that giantess came out of her castle and tried to make herself fit into the smallest of towns;
When the lady has a fuckin’ fortress.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

A basket with desire

Published on by LS Harteveld
Little Red Riding Hood Henry Liverseege; Bolton Library & Museum Services http://www.artuk.org/artworks/little-red-riding-hood-163706

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

The picture of the painting is one from before your time. When I made business cards for my alterego LS Harteveld I used this painting.
At the time I remember thinking it was okay, that it was public domain because it was so old.
But I could have been wrong.
Just like Little Red Riding Hood’s risk assessment of the forest was not entirely accurate either.

It must have been in the year of our Lord 2018 I think, when I selected the Little Red Riding Hood painting for my business card.
But as fairy tales go, her story, and my identification with her, had been much older.
Bringing it into print, was just a confirmation of her significance, not the birth of her existence.

And although over the past few weeks I have talked often about the current status of my lover and me
–
Which is our permanent status, which is there is no status! Just varying degrees of uncertainty and feeling new women enter his life.
Feeling varying degrees of interest and energetic commitment, rise and fall like the waves.
And I found myself talking about how I can see it is a dryer season for me, yet the flow going somewhere else has been almost tangible.
So arousing, so exciting, that it is almost as if I, and not this new woman, is having an affair with him.

And I told this story often, and it started taking its shape. And although the first time I told it, I still thought it was the story of me being sidelined and on a slippery slope of being broken up with;
The more often I told the story I realized that I loved telling it. That it gave me pleasure, even if I technically no longer was the main character.
Or at least not the one getting the juicy bits!

So I was starting to have fun telling the different aspects of it, or to share new developments where I always excused myself for not going into detail about the specifics because I found that for the sake of privacy those things were  best left unsaid. Instead I described the meaning they had.
“He really made an effort to keep me there.”
“He sent me something sweet.”
“He gave me something that symbolized both new hope, as well as a goodbye present.”
–
And although the story had been unfolding for a couple of weeks, it wasn’t until last night that a friend reminded me of how deliberate and cautious I had been from day one, in dealing with him.
That I had had a deep understanding this was the type of man that can take you down. And the danger, I was in.

It had been a moment of awakening!
A call, like you find in the Hero’s Journey.
The moment you know this was what you were waiting for. THIS is your quest: To be challenged by the most difficult of men.
To learn, how to stand your ground.

Right there and then, had been when the parallel of me being Little Red Riding Hood and him being the wolf, had clicked.

Yet it wasn’t until last night, when a friend reminded me how aware I had been I was playing with fire, that I remembered the wolf/ Red Riding Hood analogy from back in the heyday.

And how fitting a new analogy had been!
An analogy I used telling the story as it is today. An analogy of the sexual treats basket or the basket of desire.

Without remembering our Little Red Riding Hood/ Wolf history, the symbolism of how we started, I had picked a new symbol that could flawlessly be edited into our story.

The story of the baskets of desire.

.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood.
Red Riding Hood loved adventures and on one of her many off-the-path strolls through the forest, she had met the Wolf.
The Wolf had asked her what was in her basket, and Red Riding Hood had answered that it was cake for grandma, and that he could not have any.
She insisted every piece would go to grandma, for whom her mother had intended it to be.

The Wolf fully understood that this was not her basket to share, but he asked if she would like to go for coffee with him, at the Inn down the road.
“And they have this fresh strawberry cake there. You should really try it.”
So they went to the cafe, and the strawberry cake was the most delicious thing Red Riding Hood had ever had.
“It’s a great place for drinks too,” the Wolf said.
“Would you like to join me some time?”
They exchanged phone numbers and before little Red Riding Hood was at her grandma’s house, she had received a gif from him without any text.
But it was the sweetest thing, and she liked looking at it over and over and thought deeply about its meaning and why it was the perfect mix between something cute, and something brazen and bold.

She felt like a whole different Riding Hood after having seen the Wolf.
Like she was her own person now, and on the verge of her biggest adventure yet.

Very soon, Little Red Riding Hood became the mistress of the Wolf. And just like the first time they had seen each other, he would always know the best places to go, and the most delicious things to eat.
He would bring her to the spots in the forest where the wild berries grew, and where honey could be found.
And he would prepare meat for her, over the fire.
And although in the real world Little Red Riding Hood was a vegetarian, she never told the Wolf. It all fell under the spell of what they had together.
And she sank her little white teeth in the roast, without thinking where it came from.

He always brought her back to the edge of the forest, before midnight.
And Little Red Riding Hood never slept over.
She knew very little about him, and there were times when she hardly saw him.
Where he texted just the right amount of times for her not to grow too suspicious, but when she checked her calendar she realized it had been months since she had seen him in person.
And even longer since they had had sex.
That he had been quietly moving out of her life, and that she had failed to notice.

Once, the Wolf had broken up with her but it had changed nothing in how they related to each other.
Still together, yet never together.
But Little Red Riding Hood had not liked him breaking up with her at all. And every time he grew distant, she held her breath if he would play that card again….
The card that would end their game, at least in theory.
Until the flesh, the feelings, the attachment to being in the dance, had wiggled their way out of the social construct the Wolf had imposed upon them.

And the game would begin again.

Over eight years had passed since Little Red Riding Hood had ran into the Wolf. Or was it more accurate to say he had ran into her?
Had it all been premeditated?
And how many Little Red Riding Hoods were there?
After eight years, why was she still on the margins of his life?

But also: why did she still feel so alive, when thinking about him?
Why would she choose being sidelined, broken up with and ghosted, any day over having him at her feet asking for her hand?
The thought of the Wolf turning into a reliable dog repelled her.

And it was in that moment, that she realized it was because of his basket of desire, that the Wolf carried with him. A basket filled to the brim, and overflowing with all the adventures he had had. When being with him, he had shared that with her.
Just like he had given her the best strawberry cake, on that very first day they met.

The Wolf had a basket, with different treats, collected on different occasions throughout the forest and beyond.
And it was a mighty asset, of which few could understand the power it held.
The basket held hearty treats, some were sweet, some required acquired taste, others were completely harmless except for your enamel!
Some were perishable, which the Wolf made sure were either stored in the freezer, or consumed within hours.
The Wolf liked telling you about what was in the basket, and visibly enjoyed it when you made your pick.

The Wolf had a steady supply; Not of money, but of sensual pleasures.
And he would share them with Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tale figures too she presumed. But the price was you never asked questions how his basket came so full.
Just like Little Red Riding Hood had never asked where the roast had come from.

And Little Red Riding Hood’s basket?
Well, that no longer contained the cake of her family. She had her own basket, and it was filled with fire balls.
Not overflowing, but until about half an inch under the top.
The hard outer shell tasted of cinnamon, and you could crack it with your teeth, after you had sucked on it for quite a while.
If you tried too soon, the ball was still hard as rock, and unforgiving.
The core was juicy and sweet, and would turn into a gum once you had chewed the juice and the remains of the hard layer out of it.

Other men had often fancied her basket, but Little Red Riding Hood never felt like sharing, except for with the Wolf.
But she did recognize it would be better if she too had other adventures and would get around the forest a bit more.
She was no longer as outgoing as she had been when the Wolf met her, and sometimes she felt she had failed living up to his expectations.

She would be better off with a second Wolf in her life or another figure who sported a full and varied basket.  
But the two characters that had been candidates, had never made a serious pass at her basket.
After the initial shock of the fire works of meeting Little Red Riding Hood had passed, they firmly rejected her by saying they were involved with other women. 
Which was very effective because Little Red Riding Hood did not care for men without sexual agency.
And she lost all appetite to share her fire balls with them.

So even though for her it had only been the Wolf, and he had proven to be inconsistent in dating her, she had been happy overall.
And because her fire balls did not require any maintenance, she did not have to worry in the months she did not see the Wolf.
What she had in her basket was unchangeable. 

And one day, when the Wolf would return – and she knew he would! -she would not be angry nor disappointed. The thought would not even cross her mind.
She would be curious to what new delicacies he would offer her and the smile on his face when she tried them.

She would never ask where they came from;
And the Wolf would never tell.

And in their own kingdom, a place even beyond the realm known to Grimm and Andersen;
The Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, lived happily ever after.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

Ready to put a ring on it, but don’t know which finger

Published on by LS Harteveld
Madonna album cover photo “Like a virgin”, colorized

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I think I know the answer to this question….
And yet I have always concluded that LS Harteveld is my writer name, fully creative, and that positioning myself as a professional or even activist here would jeopardize both the integrity of this alter-ego, as well as my desire to write creatively.

So then how can the answer to a question that has been presented to me numerous times, and from different angles, how can that answer be;
Make LS Harteveld a professional.

And yet, something has been stirring, hasn’t it?
Or more precisely, not been stirring.
Because my writing here has marginalized over the past 3 years.

For years I have tried to intellectually understand my relationship to my creativity, and the place it had in the world.
And I have done the same with my relationship to my sexuality.

The first question seems to have been answered, as I have separated my creativity from my work.
And since LS Harteveld has flatlined, my creativity has taken shape under my real name, supporting the two business, that I now have up and running.

One international coaching business, since February. And one yoga company, which I finally created a sales offer for last week.
They’re both very new, and setting up the Dutch yoga company has definitely slowed down the development of the first business.
In particular creating a yoga-related offer to sell, without giving myself a  single ride down poverty lane, has required a lot of mental bandwidth. It was processing in the back of my head for weeks.

But it’s done now.
I have successfully given myself an identity, two promising careers, and an outlet for my creativity!

So that’s done, but the second question how my sexuality relates to who I am in the world, or maybe it is better to say my sexual identity, how that relates to the world?
That has not gone anywhere, the past couple of years.

The quest I had set out, to find out who I was sexually- a quest that started getting direction with buying a translation of the book White Tigress by Hsi Lai in February 2007- came to an end when I found my groove being a mistress.
And although the relationship with my lover has been susceptible to change, the values it represents are solid.
The quest was completed.
I learned I need a relationship where a man stays sexually active with other women. But to not bring that into his relationship with me. I certainly do not want to have conversations about it.

What I want is a man with an aura of flirtation, possibilities and mystery. I want him to be like a butterfly, so I can feel special when he lands on me and wants to be with me.

I want a man to be the lightness that I, as a heavily introverted writer, do not have.
I want him to shine the light I do not have.

On a less romantic note;
We’re now in a quiet phase where he is neither in nor out. On pessimistic moments (of which there are many) I call it, he’s “quiet quitting” on me.
Something I coach myself through with vigor, f.e. by setting up three companies within 6 months, as we will see before this blogpost has ended.

What happened during the pandemic, was that the solitary relationship style, and not wearing my sexual identity in public, turned against me.
I felt the pandemic had awakened social forces that pulled apart the social spectrum and created social vacuums for those unwilling to become emotionally invested in either side.
It were years where you were welcome to join either one of the polarized camps, but both required that you took the situation seriously.

Either the situation of health risks, or the situation of freedom being taken away.
I refused to care or fear for either one of them, and in the process lost the connection to society I had always felt.
I lost my belonging, and feel alienated.
This has not restored in any way, if anything it has gotten worse.
Ever since the pandemic I feel I’m living in the Matrix, that reality does not exist. 

OMG…. I can see now….. Writing you and suddenly I see why this question of my sexuality seems so important. Because it is my way out.
Or not way out but way “back in”.

My sexuality is the only thing that can bring me back to life.

My real life. Before the pandemic it was okay to have my sexuality safely stored under my alter-ego LS Harteveld;
But I can no longer afford that luxury. It is the only thing that will be able to save me.
The only thing that can bring me back on earth.

When I opened this blogpost I was going to write you that I want to start creating a “White Tigress inspired” company. A coaching company of some sort, where I help people restore their sexuality even without a partner.
Learn them to cultivate their sexuality internally.
And there was more- because I wanted to write about it as well. I wanted to write as a way of developing and exploring my own sexuality. I was thinking, maybe a 365 days book about how to develop your own White Tigress-inspired sexual identity?

Because I had missed “that” book!

The past year, sometimes multiple times a week, I would have a deep longing to read “my life book”. To read the book, about the sexual theory and practice that I aspire to adopt and the path that I want to live, only to realize that it does not yet exist!
That if I want to read such a book, I need to write it myself.

The White Tigress books do not fulfill that need for me because much like yoga they are too practical and yet not practical enough.
What I have learned about sexuality and about running and building a business is that it is never about practicalities.
Good sex and building a successful business both come from having an often inborn, completely natural way of understanding how to be in the moment with someone.
An understanding of who you are, being able to hold yourself either as a lover (sexuality) or as a professional (business), and at the same time HOLDING THE SPACE for your clients (business) or your lover (sexuality) as well!

Good sex comes from two people being able to hold the space themselves and for each other, and a good business is you creating a space where your clients love to pay you.
Having that wisdom means that although I am intrigued with all the physical and spiritual practices in the book White Tigress; I know the essence to finding “that” youthfulness, acquiring that life force, and becoming that independent in your sexuality as the White Tigress, has nothing to do with any of those practicalities. 

Just like having a successful business or a great sex life does not have anything to do with the practicalities either.

So I knew that if I wanted what the White Tigress “stood for”, for me, I could not just study that book. In fact, I resent even using the word White Tigress, because it feels I am associating myself with something that is not what I am about.
And yet I know that calling myself, or the search, White Tigress-inspired, will be very beneficial for those books from Hsi Lai.
Have a new generation, who can get to know them. 

So when I opened this blog I thought I would start working/ build a new company, in this “White Tigress” field, as LS Harteveld.
To after 5 years of hardly writing as my alter-ego (not counting years of pandemic musings, where I analyse my rapid decline of both connection to society as well as to my own sexuality), bring back inspiration in the same way as I have done under my real name;
With a company.
The book or blogposts I would write about it, would then support my professional offer/ coaching for women.

But then I realized that my sexuality is required to be under my real name. That the reason I am not IN my business in the same way as I used to be IN my writing/ being LS Harteveld, is because I have not yet made sexuality part of who I am in the real world.
When it is the only thing that can bring me back.

I chose the title to this blog “Ready to put a ring on it, but don’t know which finger”, meaning I was ready to put a ring on getting serious about my White Tigress inspired path, including exploring the path, monetizing everything I already know (which is so much!), and including writing;
But that I just didn’t know “which finger”;
LS Harteveld or my real name?
Which one, was the White Tigress?

In the past every time I wanted to commercialize LS Harteveld, I stepped away from it. But at the start of this blog post I was sure that this time, White Tigress would end up as a business, and under LS Harteveld.
But then I discovered my sexuality was required, under my real name.
That it is the secret ingredient for me to fully be in my businesses, as well as for me to connect with society again.
That the sterile version of me under my real name, will no longer suffice.

So I think I just answered my own question. And in our coaching call, I will definitely welcome your take on it, because your input on my yoga business has been indispensable in creating an offer for my yoga business that makes my heart sing!- 
but I think that broad strokes, the answer is dual;
I need the White Tigress path to be both.

I need my White Tigress inspired sexuality to be an exploration, a blog, a story, a renewal of my work as LS Harteveld. It is here, where I will write about my White Tigress inspired journey!
And I need my sexuality to be part of my identity as a professional, in particular of the international coaching company. 

Maybe I don’t need a third company after all.
And maybe that just like all the other times, LS Harteveld does not have to be commercial nor professional. 
I can just be a writer here, like I always was.

And then the White Tigress, who pulled me on the right path in 2007, can do her trick once more.
And after years of being disconnected, bring me back into the world.

As I wrote this post, another insight struck me. Because I know I am meant to have two lovers, not one. And I ve become increasingly surprised, this man has not yet shown up!
lol
But what I now think, is that the reason I know I am meant to have two, is because I am two people. I am both.
And the reason “he” has not yet appeared, is that I have kept my sexuality out of my real persona. My real persona has not been very sexual. I’ve certainly downplayed that side of myself.
No wonder he never came.
I think that becoming whole for the first time under my real name, will have the ripple effect of attracting a second lover, who I have known for ages I am supposed to have.

And that my current lover, has been the lover of LS Harteveld.
But the new lover, will be on the other side.

There where the wild things, also, are.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
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/

 

 
 
 

 

Darling, Nikki | 1998 diary

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment
https://youtu.be/j8oxXkUjYHg

Lauren writes to her penpal, bootleg trader Nikki. 

Wednesday 17 May, 1998 

Dear Nikki,
photo poster Amazon.com Nikki Sixx
I think by now we have both forgotten who is to blame, for our correspondence being but a shadow from what it once was. How the compact packages where your letters provided the padding to the cassette tapes you sent me, and that dropped with a heavy thud into the hallway, turned into professional cardboard boxes that rattled in their hollowness. With 2 handwritten A4s, folded just once, and neither wrinkled nor marked around the edges in any way. If it wasn’t for your sexual remarks, your song lyric quoting, and the always present secrecy, that our correspondence has never lost; It would be as if my accountant had mailed me. That clean. But no more, my darling Nikki. No more. And neither will you have to wait for weeks for me to answer, oh no. Because I refound myself, Nikki. And you’re coming down with me. And found a woman, a girl, you have never met, and I know you’re going to like her! It all started last Queens Day, which is at the 30th of April. I never go to bars or parties or anything, but I do love to walk the flea markets, that are part of the festivities in almost all municipalities. And I found Prince’s biggie, Purple Rain. Although I have never owned the album before, I have always felt affinity towards it because it was one of the first grownup films I ever saw. They played it in the school auditorium, and I was only 12 years old, because that was not my regular school building. Still being in the youngest highschool class, our building was a different one. That’s why I so vividly remember going there, to attend this viewing for the whole school. So I was 12 and I saw Purple Rain. When I listened to the album it all came back to me, and it was like I had received a gift from the heavens. And one I had been searching for, for months; Just in the wrong places. Because I knew I had to get back to where it all begun, sexually.  I knew that the answers to recovering my sexuality to what it was last year, my body to what it was in my college years, and my faith in myself to those first years with Bear; I had to go back in time. I knew that to recover from losing Bear, I had to go back to the time I didn’t know him. A time I had pinpointed at the year I turned 16. That had been the year when my sexuality was still in its earliest of stages, and my heart had been mine. I projected my infatuation at Jon Bon Jovi, who rarely (if ever!) broke up with me from behind the poster wall I had created for him.  But no matter how hard I tried to get myself in the virgin state of mind I must have had in that year, it didn’t work. I had too little to go by. I knew the music I must have been listening to at the time (Bon Jovi!) but because I still listen to that, as you know since you always send me the bootlegs, they didn’t characterize a specific time for me. That music has become timeless. Which was one of probably a thousand reasons why my action plan to get myself back into a healthy pre-Bear state of mind, and back into an agile pre-gaining a lot of weight body, wasn’t working. Wasn’t working until two weeks after buying the Prince cd at the flea market, I put it on and immediately felt myself drop back in time. And the portal to the earliest stage of my sexuality opened itself.

Dearly belovedWe are gathered here todayTo get through this thing called “life”

You’re the first person I am telling this to and maybe the last as well. Because I wouldn’t know who else to tell it to! Who is an accomplice in my sexuality, now that Bear is no longer there, but also, now that there are no other men either? Who is an accomplice, a friend, to the deepest most intimate part of me, when the part is not expressed? When I feel as virgin as I did when I really still was that, then who is the male counterpart? Who is the man who is the yang to my yin, as well as the yin to my yang? Where is the male body that holds the memories of having sex with me?  It is such a strange phase I am in, and I’ll get back to the Bear part and his role in this, but it feels strange to feel sexual, but not having someone to actually have sex with. And with the memory of sex having faded to where you no longer know if it was all but a dream. If you are still in a phase where you only know sex because you saw it in movies, and because you masturbate and fantasize, but your body, mind and heart really are the way we all start out; Blank sheets. Unmarked. Crisp. And your erotic thoughts are like an immaculate conception; They do not stain you. They are of the flesh, but not in the flesh. Yet. So, Bear. We have not officially broken up, but I have not seen him and I can feel he doesn’t want to be with me. Not at this point, not sexually. I’m positive that we’ll reunite as friends, and with our lives ahead of us I am a hundred percent certain we will one day have sex again. How could we not, with the chemistry we have! But the weeks or by now months without him, have also made me realize it really is time to take matters into my own hands. That regardless of how amazing our time together has been, that this was never meant to be an exclusive arrangement. He has found his real relationship, the real woman he wants to spend his life with. And if he would part with her, he would eventually get a new relationship and go with her. He has a need, a desire, to play house as I usually unceremoniously call it! And I have a desire to be a lover, and a desire to be a friend. To me playing house has the shape of being roommates, not spouses. And he knows this. We both do. I will never give up my freedom, and he will never give up his dream to have a real relationship and a family. But while he has found what he was looking for, I have not. I have not dated since I started seeing Bear. Something that is about to change! Because here I am, my darling Nikki. Standing before you, having refound the sexuality of being in an auditorium on canteen chairs row after row, on a floor that was also used for dancing. It was a pit, the floor was a few steps down, and during school hours the curtains surrounding the pit were open. But when there was a dance, or now that we were watching a movie, the curtains were shut and a few hundred high school students ranging in ages 12 to 18, were watching Purple Rain. And at least one of them, a twelve year old Lauren, came out changed. The castle started spinning Or maybe it was my brain I can’t tell you what it did to me But my body will never be the same I will write you, with the best words I can find. I will write you, until I see little Nikki grind. . ~Lauren98 Darling, Nikki | 1998 diary is the third chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1998
Book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, in this series will be published in 2023, in one bind (one title) My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP
.
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/

In the beginning was the Word

Published on by LS Harteveld
Madonna 1983

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

My new business came to a halt, when I started setting up the second business, the renewal of my yoga career.
Temporary, of course.
But it was almost shocking how all the daily marketing and connection just flatlined, as soon as I started thinking about what I needed to set up my new Dutch yoga work.
I have pushed away the thought that this new career will inevitably result in even more marketing tasks.
More hours and hours to crunch, so that it can be done next to the work you get paid for.
Not instead of it.

I don’t get paid to be active on my socials, nor do I desire to be.
But that does come with the consequence of not being able to put in all the hours every day, as you would want to.
As I, would want to.

So I find myself in a vacuum, where my daily marketing routine has fallen by the wayside and yet the activities of this new line of work still feel clumsy, time-consuming, and overwhelming.
So little gets done.
And in the quiet of living offline, there is an unnatural amount of time to question if “it” will ever work.
My marketing routine gave me a feeling of accomplishment, and without it I feel a bit lost.

But it has also brought to light that I so deeply, deeply miss writing as LS Harteveld. The work I consider my only “real” writing work.
Under my real name (not LS harteveld) writing has fallen away too, when I started my first business late last year. I rarely write anything else than things related to that business/ website.
My creative writing has come to a stop, and without missing it.

But the writing here, that has been different. It is more a therapy, a confession. Writing as LS Harteveld, has been how I started creating a new life, in 2006.  The year my relationship would end.
Finding my voice on paper and knowing what I wanted out of life, came hand in hand.

The past 5 years I have been searching professionally what I wanted. And in 2018, my first hunch was to become a fulltime writer.
I ultimately didn’t because the loneliness was killing me, but what happened in all the years after, finding my new career the one that is now in 2023 finally taking shape-
It was not good for my writing as LS Harteveld.

I like my Lauren retro-1998 project, which I started in 2019, so then it was still my retro 1994 project.
But even those blogs and the manuscript I extracted from these posts, they all seem to be such a small payoff for all those years.
Because I wrote so, so much!
Long articles, where I tried to get to the heart of what the f was happening with me. Why I felt so bad. Why the pandemic seemed to hit a nerve with me socially, and why I was practically immobilized in every way.

Out of all the blogposts I wrote since 2020 I would say 5% of the words are the retro-project, the rest is trying to decipher what was happening to me.

Part of me was so happy, when from late last year onward I was finding my feet back professionally. Under my real name.
And now with the second company too;
It is so rewarding to know you will soon be able to say “I do this” or “I am that”. 
My career is giving me back an identity. Or identities, plural then.

But in the calm of setting up this second business, and not being online and not doing any online marketing, something else came up.
An understanding that I want this LS Harteveld work back.

Every time I thought about it, prior to this week, I dismissed it a bit. Brushed it off like “Too complicated.”, and “Don’t know how to sell it.” Even my love life slowly ending, or going in hibernation, with my lover quietly moving out of my life energetically, became a reason not to invest here.
After all;
What was I supposed to write about, when I didn’t have a lover?

The pandemic years had given me enough articles and frustrations along the lines of “I feel lonely and everything sucks”.
I didn’t want to add more celibacy to the pile.

And the business-thinking, that I skillfully apply for my real name, that too became a hindrance to take this, writing as LS Harteveld, seriously.
I felt pressed to have an answer to questions like;
Shouldn’t I be publishing my Lauren retro project books instead of writing more posts? The posts for the years  1994-1997, are already done.
Why would I write something new, it was much better to work on the manuscript.

Shouldn’t I just focus on writing you Sara, and maybe a Lauren 1998 post every three months or so?

Why would I write more LS Harteveld stuff, if it would all just be more depressing, complicated, celibate bs?

The worst moments were when I considered if it would not be better to just delete all LS Harteveld websites and accounts.
Writing as LS Harteveld was all just a burden, something else to attend to, in an agenda already overflowing with desk-bound responsibilities.

But from having distanced myself from this work, from this writing, the past six months or more, the past offline, marketing-low week of being by myself and being confronted with myself, has given me a different perspective.
The perspective that once upon a time, when I was still in a relationship, when my new life as a single woman, a woman who would try new things, meet new men, and become that woman who had taken agency of her sexuality and who would have adventures others could only dream off;
That life, had started with writing.

I started over half a year, before my relationship would end.  And I would write through what seemed like a slow-turning first 18 months or so, with a kiss, a first touch, and ultimately sex with a new man.
I would write about the man after that, and the man after that.
Losing my best friend, and finding a best friend. And then losing her, again.

In this week of living offline, the realization came to me that although I will have my career back, within weeks now, the field of my love life is pretty much where it was in 2006, when I started writing.

That I am not having the love life and the experiences I want for myself.

Back then, I wanted to have new experiences with new men, but I thought it was a temporary period. I thought that ultimately, I would end up regretting breaking up, although I was ready to pay that price.
I ended up not regretting a thing, and realizing that my sexuality had been a poor match to monogamy.

That more than me needing multiple men, I needed a partner to have multiple women.
That I had felt suffocated, being the only person he had sex with. It had felt wrong in so many ways. 
What I didn’t know then, but I do know now, is that I need a partner to be free and for him to use that freedom to have adventures. Because only then do I feel  truly desired, and chosen when he has the adventure with me. 

Compared to 2006, I am guessing that my desire for a different love life, a better love life, is just the beginning, just like it was back then.
That I cannot know or see, what it will ultimately lead to.

But the situations 2006 and now are similar. Back then I had a long term partner with whom I no longer had an active sex life.
And now I have long term lover, but I think that is over for a short or longer while, or permanent. You never know.

I know something must change now, just like I knew it then.

And the week offline has brought back to me how change started. How I found that life I was looking for but also, how I had found myself back;
Writing.

In the beginning was the Word.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1997 diary.
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/