I think Dominion can provide a great life lesson. Sometimes we do the right thing and get the bad outcome. That doesn't mean doing the right thing didn't make a difference.
At the risk of waxing philosophical, if your life outside Dominion doesn't provide enough of that lesson on its own, then I'd consider you pretty fortunate. For my own part, playing Dominion is one of the things I do to generally get away from that kind of lesson and just have some fun.
I think it's a shame to need more wins to reflect your better decision making in order to have that fun.
It's not like Dominion is heavy on the luck, either. Well, compared to abstract strategy games, sure, because there is luck. But, on the forum we play tournament games in sets of 6 which can take just an hour or two of play (less time than many serious strategy games take to play just once) and if a player plays better, they usually win the match even in that short of time frame. And 6 games of variety? Lots of meaningful decisions, usually, too.
To make another point, being handicapped through bad luck (or going last) is a version of variety which can add fun to the game. Haven't you ever removed a piece from a chess board at the start for the challenge, not just to even things up? Ever gotten an extra thrill from hitting a great golf shot from an unlucky bad lie? You have to play differently from behind, not necessarily less strategically, and that different type of play can be fun, even if you don't win as many games from behind. Your decisions still matter -- they still affect your chances of winning even if you don't eventually win.
And as I mentioned above, it doesn't take that much time to balance out that bad luck or second player disadvantage over multiple games because Dominion plays so quickly.
You say you don't like when winning a card split is important, but that's a LOT of Dominion games (if nothing else it's Province/Duchy split), the skill is in figuring out how to win the important splits and how to squeak out wins if you don't.
This is a great quote, Mic.