You Can’t Achieve Love the Way You Achieve Success

High-achieving women don’t struggle with love because they’re “too much”

I hear this all the time.
“I’m too independent.”
“I intimidate men.”
“I’m just wired differently.”

No.
You are wired for achievement.

Lynda nailed this. The very traits that make women successful in business, control, logic, resilience, self-sufficiency, are the same traits that quietly sabotage intimacy when left unchecked.

You don’t need to shrink.
You don’t need to soften who you are.
You just need to stop treating love like a performance review.

If you are optimizing for love, you are already off track

Here’s the pattern I see over and over again.

High-achieving women optimize everything.
Calendars.
Goals.
Health.
Careers.
Personal growth.

So naturally, they try to optimize love.

Wrong move.

Love does not respond to hustle, strategy, or “working on yourself” harder. It responds to presence, honesty, and self-acceptance.

You cannot KPI your way into intimacy.

Self-acceptance is not self-help fluff

This is where Lynda and I went deep, and where a lot of women want to check out.

Self-acceptance is not bubble baths and affirmations.
It is not pretending you are healed.
It is not waiting until you are “better” to be loved.

Self-acceptance is the moment you stop auditioning.

When you stop proving your worth.
When you stop over-functioning.
When you stop explaining away red flags because you don’t want to seem difficult.

That’s when things change.

Success does not replace intimacy

This one matters.

You can have a thriving career, financial independence, and a full life and still want love. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Wanting partnership does not make you weak.
Wanting connection does not undo your independence.
And success does not magically meet emotional needs.

Lynda said something that stuck with me:
Achievement can become a very effective way to avoid vulnerability.

Read that again.

Love isn’t something you achieve. Stop trying to earn it.

Here is the truth I wish more women heard earlier.

Love is not a reward for being good enough.
It is not something you unlock after enough inner work.
It is not something you prove you deserve.

Love is something you receive.

And receiving requires trust.
In yourself.
In your intuition.
In your worth.

If you are always striving, fixing, or performing, there is no space left to receive anything.

If this stirred something, good

If this made you uncomfortable, good.
That usually means you recognized yourself somewhere in it.

Ask yourself:

• Where am I still performing instead of being present
• Where am I trying to earn love instead of receive it
• What would change if I trusted myself more

You don’t need to work harder to be loved.
You need to stop negotiating your worth.

Watch or listen to the full conversation

If this resonated, watch or listen to my full conversation with Lynda Williams on Possibilities with Monique de Maio. It’s honest, real, and long overdue for women who are tired of doing everything “right” and still feeling unfulfilled.

And if this episode spoke to you, leave a review. It helps these conversations reach the women who need them most.

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