On success, asymmetrical intimacy, and the radical luxury of wanting nothing from each other.
Written by Rebecca Inès Perez
I’m 33 years old. My businesses are flourishing. We’re about to hit an eight-figure year, again. And yet… something feels flat. Because somewhere along the way, building this empire cost me a hidden tax I never really asked for.
Asymmetrical intimacy : being adored online—and even in person—by people who are essentially your clients, customers, audience, or fans, and yet realizing that somehow, the connection doesn’t stick. They know you. They trust you. They might even love you. But they need something from you. You provide something they lack, desire, admire, or aspire to have. Maybe it’s knowledge. Maybe it’s access. Maybe it’s inspiration, beauty, strategy, proximity, transformation. Whatever it is, there is a transaction sitting quietly underneath the relationship. And because of that transaction, sometimes the relationship cannot be nurtured past it.
The strange thing is, I’m not innocent in this. I’m a businesswoman. Obviously, it is more profitable for me to spend my time with people who pay me. If I have three hours available, business logic tells me to give those three hours to a client instead of a friend. So you do that. Again. And again. And again. You girlboss so close to the sun that eventually, without realizing it, your clients start occupying the space where friendship used to live. You talk to them. You laugh with them. You know about their lives. You care about them. You genuinely love some of them. But they aren’t your friends. They’re your clients. And because they’re clients, there’s an emotional contract between you that neither of you ever actually signed.
I have clients I genuinely love as people. One once told me she was manifesting the day she finally got to meet me in person. I thought it was so sweet. And then, almost immediately, another thought appeared in my head: But we both know that probably isn’t going to happen unless she pays me again. Wow. What a strange thing to realize about yourself. I can genuinely care about someone and simultaneously have trained myself to believe that access to me belongs inside a transaction.
And then I experienced the same thing from the other side. My dress designer left my house tonight, and I realized: I really like this woman. Not just her work. Her. I would happily invite her over for dinner. I could imagine actually being friends with her. But then I thought: she probably thinks of me as a client. Every time she sees me, she’s working. I exist inside the professional box in her mind in exactly the same way my clients exist inside one in mine. And suddenly I could see the absurdity of it. Two women could genuinely enjoy each other, admire each other, maybe even have the potential for a lifelong friendship—and never discover it because the relationship began with an invoice. And listen, I love women supporting women. Buy her dress. Hire her company. Invest in her vision. Pay women brilliantly for brilliant work. But I wonder if somewhere in our obsession with turning our relationships into opportunities, we have forgotten that not every beautiful connection needs a business model.
We have begun applying market logic to human intimacy. What do you do? What can you offer me? Who do you know? How big is your audience? Should we collaborate? Can you introduce me? I’ll support your launch if you support mine. I’ll like your page if you like mine. Buy from my business and I’ll buy from yours.
Even generosity can quietly become reciprocal accounting. And maybe nobody is necessarily shallow for participating in this. The incentives reward it. When your attention has economic value, spending three hours with someone for absolutely no reason suddenly has an opportunity cost. The more valuable your time becomes, the more expensive purposeless time becomes. So we start guarding intimacy like it’s inventory.
And perhaps that’s why success can become strangely lonely even when you spend your entire day surrounded by people. Because everyone is there. But everyone is there for something. And who feeds me? Because metaphorically, I am having a feast. Beautiful homes. First-class flights. Staff everywhere. Luxury. Freedom. Access. I have built a life overflowing with abundance. But so much of the infrastructure surrounding that life exists through transactions. Someone is being paid. Someone is buying. Someone is selling. Someone wants access. Someone wants knowledge. Someone wants an outcome. Someone wants something. And at what point are purchased smiles, attention, access, service, admiration, and proximity no longer enough?
Because underneath all of it, I crave something deeply simple: I want to be seen for no reason at all.
The way your mother can love you. The way your partner can look at you when there is nothing to perform, nothing to prove, nothing to produce. Except I don’t want that kind of love to exist only inside my family. I want friendships like that. Relationships like that. Rooms like that. Is that too much to ask? Have we gotten so far away from true connection that everything must become a performance for monetary gain?
I see it with artists and fans, too. There are people who genuinely love an artist they’ve never met. They’ve listened to their music through heartbreaks. Read every word they’ve written. Watched them grow for ten years. They may genuinely feel enormous love, gratitude, and trust toward that person. That audience is the reason the artist gets to create for a living. And yet they cannot simply become friends. Because the intimacy is asymmetrical. They know your work. They know your story. They feel like they know you. But you don’t know them. And the moment you cross that invisible boundary, the relationship changes. The same thing happens with creators, founders, coaches, public figures—and sometimes even clients. We develop intimacy inside relationships that were never designed to hold it. These are emotional contracts we never signed. And perhaps the people I most want to spend time with are trapped inside the exact same system. Founders. Investors. Artists. Creators. Brilliant people with incredible energy whose attention has become so economically valuable that they rarely get to give it away.
Every coffee becomes networking. Every dinner becomes an opportunity. Every friendship becomes a collaboration. Every introduction needs a purpose. Every room becomes a place to perform. Unless something can be commodified, optimized, leveraged, posted, sold, invested in, or turned into an opportunity, somehow it becomes difficult to justify the time. Imagine how different our world would be if the greats hung out with other greats for no reason but connection.
Just purely for the joy of connecting with someone who can meet you eye to eye. To laugh. To talk. To be curious. To waste an entire evening together. To be witnessed. Not consumed. Not compared. Not projected onto. Not monetized. Just to exist. And yet, to simply be seems to be the most expensive thing in the world that nobody has the time—or the money—to buy. Maybe the ultimate rebellion against transaction culture is becoming so abundant that you no longer need to extract value from every room you enter.
That you can sit across from another extraordinary human being and say:
