The other possibility is that black is behind by four tempos and is "losing" by objective standards but you make inefficient moves.
/ If you actually wanted to discuss your difficulties in middlegames, please provide an example or examples of games where you faced such situations.
I say titled players because most under 2220 FIDE don`t understand anything and can only calculate.
How can you not be disgusted by chess?
I feel disgust, I just figured out something disgusting. Assessment of positions is useless, it`s nothing but a "maybe", assessment does not grantee a damn shit.
TEMPOS AND SPACE:
Black in some opening can be 4 tempos behind, less space and guess what, STILL NOT LOSING! Why? Because Black`s pieces are placed from the opening in a way that in the middle game White can`t open-up without losing 4 or more tempos himself. It`s f disgusting, because it means that if Black is prepared or memorized some shitty opening line even without understanding why pieces are where they are, STILL because pieces are there he will not lose even being 4 tempos behind. Like in the French for example: e4 e6 d4 d5 Nc3 Nf6 e5 Nd7 f4 c5 - White`s plan is to open up the position with f4, but guess what, due to N on e7 and B on c5 and not on e7, there is in the future Re8 that will together with Ne7 stop god damn opening-up of position with f4, because if f4 push happens White`s e-pawn will fall, god damn hilarious.
Imagine a scenario, you play an opening as White and get into a passive looking variation from Black you never seen before, (this set-up with g6, d6, c6, b5, a6 against 1.d4) and trying to be smart and doing assessment with some calculation and discover that you will be 4 tempos up and with space advantage! Damn, feels good, feels like you understand element TIME in chess better than your "stupid" opponent, Guess f what, it shows that you can`t open-up the position because of the way his passive pieces are placed. Opponent could have just studied opening deeply or did not, just played something he once sow on some youtube video and copied the moves, the result is the same - he is not losing, does not matter if he knew it in the opening or not, so f stupid.
The same f shit happened during a king attack. In KID, you king- attack a dude, you see you got a promising king attack, many pawns and pieces moving toward his king, while he has Q side counter-play, and guess what happens all of a mf. sudden???? Your attack dies. Because he defended passively on the king side in a way that you can`t continue pushing pawns without losing them and lose of this pawns is pure material loss that does not give you anything good.
Stupid memorization often beats assessment (what was supposed to be intelligence), that so f stupid, no intelligence at all in this game.