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relationship
Our nine-year relationship has always included a
healthy dose of one-upmanship—from wanting to prove
who’s better at geography to who can eat spicier food
to who can spin the best puns. We’re hardly alone: I
know many couples who seem locked in competition,
like my marathon-running friends who push each other
to go faster or the home cooks who argue about who’s
better at seasoning the cast iron. If so many of us are
guilty of it, I reasoned with myself, there
must be an upside to relationship rivalry.
A little good-natured competition goes
a long way, agrees Dr. Sue Johnson, a
Victoria-based clinical psychologist and
the author of a book about the science of
love, Hold Me Tight. “When it’s done re-
spectfully, it’s a part of being friends and
stimulating each other,” she says. (Think
Chrissy Teigen’s trolling of her husband,
John Legend, or the aptly titled movie
Game Night.) It’s true: Since we’ve been
together for almost a decade, my mental
jousting with Aaron does have a way of
keeping things fresh—to a point. “The
tricky part is that it can cross the line and
start to evoke attachment issues,” like a
lack of trust or difficulty connecting, adds
Johnson. At the very least, competition
can be hurtful (gloating when you solve
a clue before he does), and at the worst
it can be an unhealthy demonstration of
power and control (say, being jealous of
your significant other’s success), which
can feel like rejection to the other person
in the relationship.
The stakes of competition are higher
for women because they come with a
built-in double standard. These days, we
have a slew of female role models, like
Serena Williams and Christine Sinclair,
who are just as badass as a Rafael Nadal
or a Lionel Messi. But at the same time,
society often encourages us to put the
achievements of competitive males ahead
of our own. “Women are more likely to
bask in their partner’s successes, which
is called ‘reflected glory,’” says Marisa
Cohen, a psychology professor at St.
Francis College in New York who spe-
cializes in relationships. “It’s the ‘Your success is my suc-
cess’ point of view.” And though we think of men being
threatened by strong women as outdated, we should put
our rose-coloured glasses away: In 2015, the Society for
Personality and Social Psychology, an academic organi-
zation in Washington, D.C., conducted a series of stud-
ies with men who claimed they wanted a woman whowas successful and smarter than them. However, when it
came to picking women to date, they chose the opposite.
“There was a dual [dynamic at play] that the men weren’t
even cognizant of,” says Cohen. “Ideally, they want their
equal, but in practice [there’s an underlying feeling that]
they’re potentially jockeying for position.” This fear of
being outsmarted reminds me of a soccer-playing ex who
made fun of me for reading voraciously, as if my intellec-
tual activity highlighted his tepid relation-
ship with books.
Competition can be a one-person game
too. Cohen says that we have a “desire to
prove that we’re confident and capable,
even if it’s to ourselves.” As I think back
to our game of Post Mortem, I realize
that Cohen’s words hit a little too close to
home. Knowing that true crime is close to
my heart, Aaron was trying to be nice; he
wasn’t necessarily competing with me—I
was competing with me. He seemed mostly
amused by my being annoyed with him,
and his patronizing made me even more
irritated. Suddenly, I was back to being
a little kid with two older brothers and
something to prove. It’s also worth noting
that to ultra-sensitive people like me, game-
related slights can feel too real. (Maybe the
fact that making me cry was once a sibling
sport has something to do with it.) My
problem isn’t that I have to win; it’s that the
line between games and real life sometimes
isn’t thick enough. In my past, competing
usually meant proving that I could keep up
with the boys and losing sometimes had me
questioning my capacity to be their equal.
A game of Trivial Pursuit in which I felt pa-
tronized by an older male cousin once led
me to yell “I don’t want your pity pie!”—
which became a family motto. I wanted to
win that little plastic triangle out of merit,
not mercy.
As for our date night? Let’s just say
that our detective work wasn’t up to
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson levels.
We somehow took a wrong turn and only
solved half of the murders, both of us get-
ting increasingly frustrated. But after a
particularly tense minute, Aaron turned
to me, smiled and said, “Let’s just say we won.” Despite
his competitive nature, his strength is that even though
he’s 100-percent invested, after the game is done, he
doesn’t gloat or sulk. Adopting some of his post-play
chill has helped me care less about the outcome instead
of just acting like it. I might not be too old to learn it’s
just a game after all. TEAM
WORK
Three co-operative
games for
cutthroat couples.PANDEMIC
Is teaming up to eradicate
a fast-spreading global
disease your idea of a
romantic evening? Don
your imaginary hazmat
suit and get to saving the
world. (zmangames.com)BURGLE BROS
Your Ocean’s Eleven fan-
tasy is probably never go-
ing to come true, but this
tabletop co-op game in
which you carry out a big
heist is a close second.
Get your hands on the
loot at burglebros.com.KEEP TALKING
AND NOBODY
EXPLODES
Test your communication
skills and your friendships
as one person defuses an
onscreen explosive with
directions from their bomb
squad in this blast radius-
meets-puzzle game.
(keeptalkinggame.com)