I’m not sure how to state this more precisely but there’s a lot of dating advice which seems to portray a world where the concept of like, being on the same side as your partner is naive or totally alien. And I’m really glad I don’t live in that world.
By the grace of Christ I and many others have escaped from that world. Temporarily or permanently.
But an awful lot of people are caught in this hell-century adversarial thing. And it’s not necessarily easy to escape.
This particular phenomenon is not a “hell-century” thing, it is as old as civilization and probably older. It’s not healthy, it’s not wise, but…“men and women have different interests, you should treat your romantic interaction as a battle that you’re trying to win” is not a take that you need contemporary culture in order to generate.
Like, check out almost any Shakespeare comedy.
(There’s a much broader discussion to be had about the widespread tendency to blame These Terrible Times for problems that have been around forever, but – we don’t have to do that right now.)