The Queen’s Gambit

Too soon to say

I’ve been playing games with boys since I was eight years old.

Bulldog was my first form of therapy. Unregulated, unsupervised, and wildly effective. Nothing says character development like being the only Black girl in a gingham skirt, rugby tackling the patriarchy at lunchtime.

Whilst the other girls skipped rope or learned to handstand in groups of three, I was on the oak-lined school field chasing boys and (violently) taking them down. Truthfully, I liked the boys more. I didn’t look like the other girls — and they never let me forget it. But on the field? None of that seemed to matter.

You never really grow out of it — playing with the boys.
Only now the games are quieter. Slower. Played over unsent texts and delayed replies. We decode subtext. Ambiguity. A slightly changed tone in a voice note like it’s leaked intelligence from GCHQ. For the most part, we don’t even know what we’re playing for.

What do you mean you expect me to chase something that’s already in my bed?

At least Bulldog had rules.
This new game — “casual but invested but also pretending you don’t care” — is less game and more emotional admin with no job description.

It all feels like putting ketchup on steak. Deeply, fundamentally… wrong.

Apparently, I’m a hopeless romantic disguised as a cynical Gen Z — which basically means I believe in love, I just assume it won’t happen for me.
The fairy tale exists. Just not in my postcode.

The perennial question is this — do you really have to play games to keep someone interested?
Or does the need for strategy mean they were never really interested in the first place?

My parents are always asking if I’ve found a boyfriend yet. As if he’s hiding between my sofa cushions like spare change, just waiting to be selected. “Well, I’m seeing someone,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

Well mother, what it means is that I’m perpetually stuck in an infuriating limbo — not official, not casual, just vaguely rotating around each other like confused planets in the wrong solar system.

“It means we’re just seeing where things go.”

Where things go normally looks something like this:

He chases first. Maybe messages for weeks. Tries to make plans. Stays persistent.
Once you’re in it? Once you like him?
He pulls back and you catch yourself strategising.
Not calling first. Not messaging too soon. Attempting to sound like you don’t care — even though you do.
Because apparently, the worst thing you can be in this era of romantic minimalism is enthusiastic.

We’re told that the person who cares less has more power. That honesty is a liability. That timing is everything — except no one can agree on what that timing should be.

You can move to a new city alone, with no job, no friends, no plan, just an appetite for chaos and a highly romanticised sense of survival. You can shed your skin, quit stable careers and gamble everything on blind faith more than once. You can say that you’re not afraid to fall.

And yet - a strange shame in wanting love still lingers. Like admitting it out loud makes you less evolved.

Ironically, it was my father who taught me how to play chess. I say “ironically” because he was (stereotypically) inconsistent. But from him, the key takeaway I deduced from the black-and-white war of foresight and sacrifice, was that the queen is the most powerful piece on the board. She basically protects the king, because let’s be honest – he can’t actually do much.

I think about that a lot.
How women do the holding together.
So why are we so afraid that saying the wrong thing will scare him off? Maybe that’s the point. After all, if he can’t handle the truth — can he handle you?

That’s the question we should all really be asking. Because somewhere down the line, casting someone in a role they were never equipped to play only ends in disaster.

If he can’t move with us, perhaps we should consider leaving him behind with the pawns.