Not commenting on whether life is a zero sum game, I don't know to be honest. I tend to disagree but whatever.

But when it comes to the power game in a relationship, let me clarify some.

When I say I understand you CM please believe me that I do. I can see dozens of common threads in our ways of thinking, especially my way of thinking during high school.

This was my love life dude, just so you don't question my credibility:

In high school things were bad, in a different way from you. I was baptized by fire into the wonderful world of loveless sex. I didn't like it, but did it more out of fear than anything - I was usually led into it by the girls and didn't seek it myself, at first, until I fell for one of them but she was not in it for the emotions and I had my heart broken. So I became a bitter manipulator myself for a while, did shit I am not proud of, and yeah. Was a douche. But the whole time it was a defense mechanism to cope with my failure to find "true love" and to get with the girl I really liked, who was a girl at school I loved, unrequited, for about two years. I coped by fucking around with other people basically.

So this gave me the experience to see the dark underbelly of opposite sex relations if you will. But my guilt caught up with me and when college came I said I'm done with that shit. I was still an idealist you see. So I said no more fucking around I will do my own thing and if a girl is interested, so am I, and I will go for a long term "real" relationship.

Like magic, I noticed a girl I met pretty early on liked me. On autopilot I responded positively to her outreach - was I "acting"? No! I was just flirting. That's not "acting", that's just living. If you so wish, you can see life as a series of "acts" but that's a pretty pessimistic way to view the world.

When you go to a restaurant you "act" like a customer. When you go to a funeral you act like a mourner. You act like a son. You act like a friend. You may say "but I AM those things."

I would agree, but you become them by acting like them. There is a thing in psychology, I forget what it is called, called role-playing something or other. It means - when we take on new social roles in our lives, we feel strange at first, as if we are "acting," it's not the real us. But after a while the "act" BECOMES you. If you get married or have a kid for example, you start off by ACTING like a husband or father, and it feels weird, and then eventually the act becomes you, and it doesn't feel like acting anymore.

So if you want to reject all that that's your problem but that IS life. It's no more pessimistic than saying if you want to buy anything you have to have money. Lol.

Anyway so I flirted with her and then somewhere along the way realized I was at a fork - to continue would be to lead her on. I realized I thought she was pretty neat and said let's go ahead with it.

I want to mention something important to you at this point - a few of the reasons, she later confirmed this, why she was attracted to me in the crucial initial stage where the attraction blooms and come to fruition, was that she perceived that I was "better" than she was. Why did she perceive this? A few reasons. I am not all that great looking. It was, instead, the other things I had going on. I couldn't always hang out, for example. And when we did, I was not as eager as she. Remember I was still deciding whether to go for it. I was more aloof, and more confident. I wasn't ACTUALLY totally disinterested, nor was I hiding a burning passion. I was in a middle ground, a good place to be to attract someone. You can act this out, or it can be real, but it's what works. This gave her the impression that I must be more attractive than she is, so it made her want me, because I was more valuable than if it was the other way around. The other thing I should mention briefly was that I told her about my nefarious sexual activities in high school and she was attracted to me in the "bad boy" sense, i.e., she wanted to be the one that settled me down, if you understand.

So things progressed and she became my girlfriend and we were in love. Yes, real love. She loved me and I loved her and it was not an act. But the power play was there. I didn't perceive it, because, remember, I was like you. I didn't believe in it. I thought it didn't apply if you are in love. I was only concerned with being the best boyfriend I could be and basically elevating her above myself - this is what I thought love was. Part of me still does think that.

In my mind I thought the same things ulytau (I think) said earlier - if two people are utterly committed to each other and in love, there is no power play, no games. You can only control your own actions, so I did my part. I thought we had that, that there was no power play, despite what one of my more cynical friends kept saying.

But you know what happened, CM? She left me, dude. I am still getting over her, still getting over that bullshit. Probably still love her actually. But even the worst experiences in life can teach you something, and after replaying the relationship over in my mind again and again, you know what I learned?

The power play was there the WHOLE damn time, and the relationship failed BECAUSE I ignored it. I was TOO available. I became boring. She fell out of love.

Now I'm going to stop you right there. You are thinking "it was never real love then if she just got bored and stopped loving you."

Jury is out on that. I know for myself that I still partly agree with that. I know what MY definition of love is - love is the promise (it is a choice, this is important) to another person to value their concerns above your concerns. When the love is requited the situation is ideal.

The thing is that most of the world does not share this definition. To most, love is something you fall in and out of. When you are in love you will do probably anything for the other person, but these people, the majority, believing it is not a choice but an emotion over which one has no control. So, if some external factor they may not even be consciously aware of reduces their attraction to you, they will fall out of "love" (infatuation).

Are there perhaps women out there who share your and my definition of love? Perhaps. I don't know of any. In the meantime all this shit shouldn't stop you from sticking your neck out there anyway. I don't regret falling in love with my ex, even though she doesn't love me anymore. We WERE in love.

But what I do regret was not doing the relationship right. TRUE love puts the health of the relationship first, and if I had seen more clearly I might have fixed a few things to keep it healthier. Sometimes that entails coming off as aloof or disinterested. I know that doesn't seem intuitive, but human beings are like that. If you want to get along with, you know, human beings, you need to respond to the way they actually are in practice.

Do you understand now what I'm saying? I'm not just trolling you, and I'm not just bitter. I'm all for love, but I'm not naive. Not anymore.