I mentioned in one of my recent posts that mating is a zero sum game, to much backlash. I suspect there's a disconnect between what I mean and how people took it:

Any improvement in strategy for men will harm the strategy for women and vice versa.

Men and women have competing goals:

Women want to select, men want to be selected.

Women select for quality, men aim for quantity.

With this in mind, the more he can improve his perceived value, the more likely he is to be selected, while a woman's strategy is to ensure her discrimination is finely tuned to select for the apex of masculinity while filtering out frauds. One party's gain is another party's loss.

Additionally, on a gender level, men compete with men and women compete with women, creating other zero sum competitions as well.

What are your thoughts on mating being ZERO SUM?