I’m looking out over jungle and an endless sea of blue as I write this 🌿🌊 — just a couple days after another relationship transition.

2025 was not gentle in her demand for alignment over comfort.

Not for anyone I know.

I had to be honest that a romantic connection I was exploring did not seem like a fit for long-term partnership… co-parenting… or co-habitating.

I watch women stay in relationships that aren’t a fit because…

•they’re scared to be alone

•their biological clock is ticking ⏳

•society tells women there’s something wrong with them if they’re not married by a certain age (or if they’ve been single for “too long”)

•their inner critic berates them for yet another “failure”

And trust me, I get it.

I have had to confront every one of those things in 2025.

It takes a lot of courage to meet your own disappointment,
to continue to trust the timing of YOUR life,
to face the social stigma head on,
to stand in your worth and stay true to your inner knowing 🕯️

I won’t lie to you:

There is a cost to becoming an embodied woman, devoted to love—

You can’t pretend.
You can no longer override your body to stay.
You won’t contort yourself or abandon your heart to make it work.
You will serve Love at the expense of your ego and your personal preferences.

2025 really cemented in me that relational mastery is not about whether relationships last a lifetime.

Relational mastery means knowing the correct level of intimacy at which you can love someone well. 🤍

Which doesn’t always mean the relationship format you’re in endures.

In family relationships, friendships, and romantic connections, I have found that forcing a level of closeness inside of which you cannot be fully authentic, or feel safe, does not serve love. Ever.

And it often means making humbling and challenging choices to step back the level of intimacy so that love can flow more freely again.

There have been people I can only love well from a no-contact distance — meaning that is the amount of space required to keep my heart open towards them.

I can love many people well from an acquaintance distance, a smaller number at the level of friendship, a select few at the level of romantic partnership… and it is a very rare human I can love well at the level of cohabitating, co-parenting, co-creating a life.

Loving well means:

Can I accept you as you are, without needing to change you?
Can I stay open-hearted as my baseline?
Can I be generous? Am I bringing my desires more than my complaints?
Does my nervous system feel safe enough that I can keep giving you my trust?
Am I connected to my sincere desire for this? 💗

That’s how our nervous systems work; how attachment patterning works:

The more intimate the relationship, the more old stuff surfaces… and the more important it becomes that the match is additive enough — inspires the best out of each other enough — to make the inevitable challenge of that level of intimacy worthwhile.

I’ve never been someone who was going to tolerate being mildly miserable in relationship.

And people have made that mean all kinds of things about me:

•Her standards are too high

•She’s difficult

•She’s avoidant

•She’s afraid of commitment

•She’s holding out for a fantasy

•She’s entitled

And trust me, I’ve explored each of those angles; seeing if perhaps there’s some “fix” on my side, that would have me willing to choose the highest level of intimacy in partnerships I wanted to work.

This is where trusting yourself becomes maybe the most important relationship skill you’ll cultivate. 🧭

Without it, there’s no peace with anyone.

I teach this body of work inside Becoming the Muse, the path of the embodied woman, devoted to love. Doors open for enrollment Monday, Jan 12th, 2026. The waitlist is live if you’re feeling the pull.

Your seasoned relationship sherpa,

Caite 🤍