11:57 p.m. again. My phone pings.
[I still like you today. Please confirm.]
I open my task-manager, not my heart. Tonight’s checklist: tell him I like him 3×, hold eye contact for 7 seconds, initiate physical contact twice. His tally so far: one smile, two averted glances. Below average. Should I schedule extra compensation for the weekend?
The Love Metrics on My Fridge
The red-ink figures watch me like sentinels.
- Monday: He looked at me 47 times (target 50)
- Tuesday: He smiled 3 times (–2 from last week)
- Wednesday: First hugs 0 (circled in red)
I lived by these numbers. I replaced the warmth in his eyes with graphs and the brush of his hand with percentages. There was a time I believed the data made love more certain.
“What am I doing—measuring his temperature or forcing his blood to boil?”
Why She Checks the Love Index Each Morning
Seo-jin, 29, works in marketing. She runs romance like an ad campaign.
7 a.m. She wakes and reaches for her phone.
[Yesterday’s hearts from him: 7. Target: 10. Recalculate.]
In front of the bathroom mirror she drafts the day’s strategy. “Lunch out: +2. Movie tonight: +3. That should bring me to twelve.” She smiles, the satisfied grin of a project manager forecasting success.
Her lover, Min-su, watched her one day a month ago and said quietly, “Can we… just be together today?”
Seo-jin flustered. It wasn’t on the plan. She pulled out her phone to check the calendar. “I had eight likes scheduled for today…”
Min-su looked down at her screen. “Jin, I honestly don’t know how many times a day I’m supposed to say I like you.”
The Truth on the 47th-Floor Rooftop
After work, Seo-jin rode the elevator to the roof.
Seoul’s lights were beginning to bloom. She took out her phone and typed to Min-su:
[Tonight I’m not sending you the invoice for my love.]
She never hit send. She lowered the phone and gazed at the city glittering forty-seven floors below.
“What I really wanted… wasn’t proof of love. Maybe I needed confirmation of how little I was loved more than I needed anything else.”
The Anatomy of Desire
Why do we turn love into statistics?
The moment dating becomes labor, we discover we never wanted love at all.
We were terrified. Afraid it might vanish overnight. The dread that today’s 100 % could be tomorrow’s 50 %. So we audited relentlessly: how many smiles, how many embraces, how many “I love you”s.
We were possessed by the need for control. Love is unpredictable, and uncertainty frightened us. The delusion that if I’m better, give more, try harder, he won’t leave.
We refused to surrender self-protection. Real love is vulnerability: “I know you could leave me—and still, I love you.” But we wrapped that frailty in numbers.
I Let Him Go
That night, I turned off my phone.
“Min-su, starting tomorrow, I’m going to stop keeping a record of how much I love you.”
He gave me a puzzled look. “So… you don’t love me anymore?”
I laughed. “No. Instead of measuring how much you love me, I’m going to discover how much love I’m capable of giving.”
We traded numbers for silence. The silence was terrifying. Yet inside it, for the first time, I felt the cadence of his breath.
A Final Question
Did you check yesterday’s KPI for the person you love? And can you live today without that number?