From Connection to Competition: How Dating Became a Power Struggle
Winning and being chosen are not the same things.
Most dating situations fall apart because we’re all trying to win.
As soon as I realize I have to play a game with someone just to keep their attention, I feel a tiny door inside me shut. Because that’s not connection, that’s war.
Winning the breakup. Winning the text thread. Winning the silence. We turn love into a kind of sport, tallying who waits longer to reply, who seems cooler, who can pretend not to care. We chase the upper hand, forgetting that the whole point was to hold each other’s hands.
But the truth is, if one person has to win, you both lose.
Good relationships aren’t built on power plays. They live on quiet truths, awkward honesty, soft confessions whispered in dark rooms. When dating becomes about keeping score, intimacy crawls under the bed and hides.
Think of it like this: if you’re a star baseball player, you didn’t just get picked to win. You won because you practiced, sweated, showed up again and again. You earned it.
But love doesn’t work like baseball. You can try your hardest, give everything you’ve got, stay up all night rehearsing your lines and still not be chosen.
Because winning is about performance. Being chosen is about connection. And sometimes, no amount of effort can bridge that mysterious space between two people.
Love isn’t a game. And if you’re busy trying to win, you’ll miss the moment someone might have chosen you.
Act accordingly.
You've won when the game is gone, when the weight is lifted and there is no work to do. That's the "you'll know it when you feel it" moment. Effortless connection.
I never understood the whole playing games thing. I think it’s some kind of hold over from our childhood crushes and phrases we heard like “win their heart” or something like that. The only way I see a comparison to games being relevant is I use the term team mates as much as s/o or partners. Just me I guess never mind about winning. If you’re looking at it as a game or competition it means there’s inevitably a loser. That’s a definite turn off to me.