I know it's senseless. I know it's unreasonable. I know it's unhealthy. There is, objectively, no reason to be in a bad mood because I lost a game being played for fun that has no stakes attached.
To be clear, this isn't directed at the person who beat me (unless it's someone who's really rubbing my face in it). I want to win, I'm doing my best to win, I wouldn't ask them to do any less, and I wouldn't get any satisfaction from a victory against someone who was pulling their punches anyway. My negative feelings are largely directed inward: when I lose, I feel like a failure even though I intellectually understand that you'd have to be a complete tool to judge anyone else so harshly for losing at a game.
I've been like this as long as I can remember. I've definitely gotten a much better handle on my emotions when I was young, but I'm sure it it still comes through, even if people don't say anything. It's not fair to the people I play with, and I wish I wasn't this way. I actually greatly prefer cooperative games over competitive games because of this, because that way if I lose, the other player(s) is/are in the same boat - we all failed together, so I can't be judged negatively in comparison to anyone.
Anyone else have similar issues? Anyone who can offer insight as to why I might feel this way?
there's this one Daigo quote I can't be arsed to dig up so I'll paraphrase: instead of focusing on winning, make continual improvement the goal. Focus on what you did better than last time, try to identify mistakes and treat learning from them as the real victory condition.
recommend reading David Sirlin's book Playing to Win to get a deeper dive into that kind of mindset and common pitfalls. The book focuses on 2D fighting games, but the lessons apply to ALL competitive games. It's free online: https://www.sirlin.net/ptw
This book should be required reading before you're allowed to play any game, IMO. Even kindergarteners shouldn't play Candyland or Tic Tac Toe until they've read it.
With my oldest, when we play games, I always shake her hand at the end and say "good game!". I haven't read that book, but hopefully this ritual will have positive developments down the line. She's 4 so, most games are games of chance anyway lol.
I came here to say basically this. There was a time where i was playing a lot of competitive games. SC2, SF4, league, WC3, TF2, were all in the rotation. I watched a lot of competitive SC2, and as a result a lot of DAY[9]. One thing I took away from his analysis of games was just how important it was to perform self analysis and critique. If you are losing, then that means your opponent is succeeding at something your not. In SC2 it was all about timing and game knowledge. How long does it take to ling rush from start position 1 on map X and is that fast enough to beat out a ling defense. That kind of stuff.
The other thing though that I really took away from his analysis and commentary was how important it is to be sporting. You say GLHF, you say GG, and you should mean it. Losing is the process of learning, in many cases you have to fail before you can succeed, and analyzing your failures can lead to to theories that you can then put into practice. If you can't gracefully lose, it means you haven't accepted that losing is how you learn. If all you do is lose and never try to address the why then of course you'll be angry.
I love the feeling that comes from that incremental improvement.