Love Beyond Forever and the Tyranny of KPIs

It’s very rare that I hang out with my friends from my corporate era. When we do meet it feels like we live in alternate universes—one where life is polished, scheduled, and measured... and the other, mine, where everything is felt deeply, built on intuition, and figured out one breath at a time. Sometimes I envy them. Sometimes they envy me. There’s always a little dance between admiration and discomfort. But we do like seeing each other, so I was excited to meet them for Sunday brunch.

We were having mimosas by the lake and took turns sharing what had changed since our last meetup. My update, of course, included a new breakup. Another chapter closed.

“I find it really interesting,” one of them said, tilting her glass, “that being a relationship coach... all your relationships always fail.”

It felt like a punch in my face. I want to believe that she wasn’t being cruel. Just brutally honest and was not really realizing the weight of their words. It would’ve hurt less if she’d said “amazing relationship coach” — which, in fairness, is true. But she didn’t. In her eyes, I was just a coach. One with failed relationships. No acknowledgment of the work. The depth. The devotion. Or the love given and received. 

I smiled through the sting. And somehow, I managed to breathe. I silently thanked every single time I had shamed myself with those exact same words. I had met this monster before — it had crawled into my bed many nights and disturbed me many days —but it didn’t scare me anymore.I had learned to appease him, and even make him apologize, after wrestling him to the floor and twisting his arm. I was prepared. Thank you, monster.

“I like to think of them less as failures and more like school grades,” I said, half-joking, half-philosophical. “The bar owner was kindergarten — sweet, innocent, full of naps and tears. The fancy lawyer was maybe first grade: basic lessons in heartbreak. The photographer? I definitely had to repeat that one — felt like college with all the late nights and existential dread. And this last one… I don’t know, maybe it was my third PhD in emotional resilience and unconditional love.” I paused, then added with a soft smile, “So, no. I’m not failing darling. I’m in a very advanced curriculum. I’m mastering this art.”

There was a long silence. Saying it out loud felt healing. I was reclaiming and honoring my path and every single man that had walked it with me. Yes, I’ve had the honor — and the privilege — of loving many men in this lifetime. More than I can count on fingers and toes. I’ve been lucky. They’ve been lucky too. And we’ve also suffered a bit.

We laughed until it hurt. Loved like it was the only thing that mattered. We’ve cared for each other, cried, fought, hurt each other with words and silences, told beautiful lies and ugly truths. We made love like prayer and as routine, broken up like storms, and sometimes circled back for second and third rounds — softer, wiser, or just curious.

We dreamed together, made plans and canceled them, or watched them come to life with someone else. We shared fears, repeated patterns, passed viruses and tenderness, met each other’s families, raised kids temporarily — human and furry.

For as long as it lasted, it was real. And no, we didn’t walk off into a sunset holding hands forever. But not one of those loves — not even the most tangled, the most short-lived, the most broken — was a failure. Each one was a sincere, imperfect, courageous attempt to love and be loved. To be seen. To be desired. To belong. 

“Fuck!” one of them scoffed, laughing. “Here I am, loyal to the same partner since dial-up internet. Multiple PhDs? I haven’t even graduated elementary school!”

We all burst into laughter as each of them started calculating their “relationship degree” out loud. But somewhere between the jokes, the giggles, and the mimosas, shame quietly crept in — for all of us. For being in high school, or elementary, or a master’s program. For having loved too many for too short, or too few for too long, or no one at all. It didn’t matter where we were standing — that shame was still there. No relational path escaped judgment. 

Are we all really failing?

Or have we been conditioned to feel that we have failed?

For example, if I look back at my “college relationship degree” I remember that I was trying to hold space. For him. For his beautiful children. For their broken world in the middle of a painful divorce. I wanted to give them a sense of landing, of home. And somehow, I did. Gracefully, lovingly — for two whole years or maybe more. No one got hurt. No one got lost. We found a way to keep going, day after day, as best we could.

So, when it ended… Why was my first instinct to feel like I had failed? Like we had failed? Why did I let the silence of that final night — cold and tense — carry more weight than all the dinners, movies, hugs, and laughter we shared before it? Why couldn’t we have chosen a different kind of ending? One where we sat across from each other, poured a glass of wine, and said: Thank you. We did something beautiful. We made it through something hard. I see you. I release you.

Why did my friends come over with tissues and ice cream instead of with mezcal and confetti? Why didn’t anyone say: You were the most epic stepmom a teenager could dream of. You showed up. You loved. You held the line with so much grace. Congratulations.

Why did my ex-therapist give us both a label that pierced through my soul, instead of reflecting back to me how much I’d grown? How I had stayed, this time — how I’d honored my commitment, in ways I never could before.

Why did my energy healer urge me to cut cords and burn memories, instead of giving that relationship a space in my heart and let it stay there, not as a wound, but as a part of my journey?

Even well-meaning people — therapists, healers, friends — made me feel that I had done something wrong.

But no, it’s not them or my empath side, my softness or my humanness that’s wrong. The problem is you: Corporate Culture Bitch.

 With your curled eyelashes, high heels, your systemic shame, corporate values, perfectionism, and productivity metrics.

The problem is when you drag your problem-solving mindset into our love lives, our hearts, our beds.

When you measure everything from orgasms and love to heartbreaks and erections — and dare to judge us by impossible standards.

According to you, everything must be optimized, fixed, upgraded.

You make us feel exhausted.

Relationships become projects. And when a “project” ends, or deviates, or lasts too long, you immediately ask: What went wrong?Then you start pointing fingers. And keeping scores in emotionless spreadsheets that you use to hurt us deeper.

You’ve trained us to measure “success” in relationships — and in life — by longevity, flawlessness, detachment or survival.

You apply your corporate logic to the most fragile, nuanced human experience: Love.

And you threaten us: Make sure your relationship doesn’t deviate from these KPIs for love, or we’ll make you feel the failure — and we’ll all shame you for it. Including your friends, therapists and healers.

Because shame, after all, is your favorite tool of control.

But here’s the truth: Nothing went wrong.

We were humans, relating like humans.

Some days we did amazing.

Some days we sucked.

Sometimes we could stay.

Sometimes we couldn’t.

Love and life are not always upward graphs.

We should not feel shame for that. 

If there’s a feeling we need more of in this territory — it’s compassion.

But for you — as far as I’m concerned — you can go back to your loveless headquarters and lock yourself in a meeting room with your social media mantras and those self-help influencers, endlessly validating each other until you all burn out.

Why do we have to reduce human relationships to any kind of measurement?

“It depends on what you were trying to achieve.” That’s a phrase I use a lot with myself and with my clients — especially when we find ourselves spiraling into those excruciating, painful rabbit holes of shame.

What were you trying to achieve when that happened?

That breakup. That infidelity. That lie. That moment you raised your voice. That thing that wakes you up at night with guilt.

None of us — including myself — were trying to fail.

I swear, that’s true 100% of the time.

If we slow down and really look… 

We’re either trying to be loved —or trying not to hurt someone else.

Sometimes gracefully.

Sometimes clumsily.

Believe it or not, most of us aren’t bad human beings.

The real challenge is this: most of the time—we’re not even conscious of what we’re trying to achieve. We live our lives guided by someone else’s maps, and we measure ourselves against someone else’s metrics — the monsters, the system, or the corporate bitch — without ever pausing to ask: Do I even agree with this? Does this serve ME?

These unexamined standards are usually rooted in control and permanence, not presence and love. And they steal meaning from our lives.

But they are not true. We know this. 

We know that permanence is not a valid measure of love. 

That signing a marriage contract guarantees nothing. 

That leaving doesn't always mean failure.

Shame is externally imposed, then internalized until it runs on autopilot.

 Shame is not natural — it’s installed.

And when we remember this — when we finally face that curled-eyelash bitch, or the monster, or the system —the spell is broken.

That force that shaped generations of emotional repression dissolves the moment you see it and name it.

I see you. 

I’m not afraid of you.

And I’m not yours anymore.

Puff. It’s gone.

What am I trying to achieve?

Who do I want to be? 

Am I embodying a version of myself that I’m proud of? 

Those are the only performance metrics I care about today.

No one gets to tell me what to measure. 

No one gets to shame me or convince me I’ve failed — not you, monster, not even you, fancy-eyelashed corporate culture, not you, capitalist relationship industry.

I’m done with the shame. 

I’m done with the judgment. 

I’m done with the artificial measurements of love.

And I hope you’re done too. 

Done measuring your worth by someone else’s ruler. 

Done letting shame define your story.