If you’re only winning so people will love you, every loss feels like losing them.

When achievement is carrying the weight of belonging, an ordinary setback stops being ordinary. It turns into a threat to relationships you believe are conditional, which is why some losses hurt out of all proportion to what was actually lost. The fear is not about the result. It is about what you think the result buys you.

Test that assumption rather than living inside it. Notice who stayed the last time something went badly. If some people turn out to be there only for the winning, that is worth knowing early, and it is information about them.