Hi, I'm Tess.
And for a long time, my love life looked nothing like the rest of my life.
I was ambitious. I worked hard. I was used to getting things done and figuring shit out. But when it came to relationships? Different story.
I spent four years with a man who started off great, in a relationship that slowly made me more and more miserable. And the worst part was, I knew. I knew I wasn't happy. I knew something needed to change. But I was absolutely terrified to leave.
Because what if I never met anyone else? What if this was my chance at love and I was about to throw it away? So I stayed.
Looking back, it wasn't the first time I'd found myself in that position. I seemed to have a thing for emotionally unavailable men, or men with something going on that I thought I could fix.
As the eldest daughter of divorced parents, I'd taken on the role of the glue. The responsible one. The one who could read the room, manage everyone's emotions and keep everything together. And I'd carried that straight into my relationships.
Somewhere along the way, I'd started believing that being loved meant being needed. That I had to work for it. That if I could just do enough, be enough or help enough, everything would be okay.
Four years later, I'd gained over 15kg, my confidence had disappeared and I barely recognised myself.
Until one weekend, I had my fuck this moment. I remember thinking: this is NOT what love is supposed to feel like.
So I left.
I got shit done. I did what I'd always been good at doing: I moved house, changed jobs, lost two stone and built a completely different life.
And I thought I'd finally feel amazing. Except... I didn't.
Then something happened that really threw me. I started experiencing anxiety on calls at work, which, as someone who'd always been a top performer, felt completely unlike me.
I tried therapy, and it helped me understand a lot about myself. But at that point, I still felt like I was going over the same things without making the changes I wanted. I could explain my patterns. I just didn't know how to stop repeating them.
So I started working with a mindset coach. We explored the beliefs sitting underneath that anxiety: not feeling good enough, fear of rejection and the pressure to get everything right.
We were working on something that seemed, on the surface, to be about cold calls. But I started noticing changes in other parts of my life too. Including how I approached love.
That experience changed the direction of my life. It made me realise how much our beliefs about ourselves can influence what we expect, what we tolerate, what we fear and how we behave in relationships. It's what led me to train in NLP and eventually create Highest League.
Because I kept thinking about women like me. Women who are successful, independent, self-aware and have built genuinely amazing lives. Women who know they deserve a beautiful relationship, but somehow keep finding themselves overthinking texts, chasing the wrong men, questioning their worth and feeling like finding love has become another full-time fucking job.
And I wanted to help them change that.
The name came from that thing people say to you after a breakup: "She's out of his league." The whole measure in that sentence is HIM.
So I flipped it. The league is yours. Your highest league is your highest self, and everything else gets measured against that instead.
Not anti-love (I'm obsessed with my person 💌), but he isn't the scoreboard. The scoreboard is you.
Today, I'm with Chaz. And the biggest difference isn't simply that I'm in a relationship. It's how I feel in one.
I don't feel responsible for fixing him. I don't have to hold everything together to feel loved. I get to be myself, have my own life and enjoy being loved without constantly worrying about losing it.
I still get the romance, the excitement and the butterflies. But my love life doesn't consume my life anymore.
And babe, that's what I want for you too.
Through Highest League and my private mentorship, THE ASCENT, I help ambitious women understand the patterns that have been keeping them stuck, work on the beliefs underneath them and start showing up differently in love.
Because you can have an incredible career, brilliant friendships, a gorgeous life AND a man who absolutely adores you.
You don't have to choose.
Ready to change the way you experience love?
Explore The AscentYour next chapter is waiting, babe. Let's make it a fucking good one. 💋