The classic scenario I imagine is the guy who knows he's gotta call his wife/girlfriend or she'll get upset, he's has to say "love you", he has to not say the wrong thing to end up in the doghouse with his girl, etc., and that's the dynamic of their relationship. Meanwhile, he talks real with his male buddies, tells them shit like how, 2 years into a marriage, he's starting to imagine he's having sex with other people while having sex with his wife, he tells his unmarried buddies "trust me, it will happen to you."

Maybe when they first met, he thought she was really pretty, but didn't think he had a shot with her. Then, to his delight, she's laughing at his jokes. She seems to think he's something, wow. So he goes with it. He asks her on a date, she agrees. He's excited. As they date, he finds he likes being around her. She makes him smile, is really sweet, not irritating, etc.

I think the above describes a LOT of relationships. Nowadays, it seems like there's an ideal of open peers, and friends, to the degree that anything else is seen as downright wrong. But plenty of our parents didn't even have relationships with each other like that, not to mention sexual pairings throughout history. When I see some macho muscle dude with the cute girlfriend who cries a lot, who he calls "sweetie, baby...", I recognize that it's that kind of relationship.

And do they not? Maybe they're not really big on self-reflection, and just found they wanted to be with each other for reasons not explored. Maybe they know. Maybe he knows, and she doesn't? You sometimes see that scenario where the stoic guy is invested with an emotional narrative by the women which isn't actually what's going on in his head. You ever see that guy hanging out with a girl who won't shut up, and he just offers basic grunts of agreement, and stays silent while she recounts why she thinks her gf Trish is kind of seedy and a little bit of a bitch? He's just going along with the attention, and she's almost building a fantasy dynamic with this guy.

I once got told by an old female friend that I saw all the time during college that I should have been more honest with her. But did she really understand what that would have entailed? Did she want to know that she got a pass because she was pretty, and that her personality in a man's body was no one that group would have hung out with? Did she want to know I jerked off to visions of her getting plowed in the ass with a mechanical dildo? Boys and girls were...boys and girls. We weren't 'friends' in the same way I was friends with the dudes. It's not like I hated her, but she was asking for some idealistic scenario. What, the girls didn't gossip about us when they were alone together?

I've gone on long enough. I'm curious what people here think. What percentage of relationships out there, friendships between men and women, etc. are actually 'honest' in the ways the above are not? What do you observe in the people you know? What is your own experience like? Do you think you've ever fooled yourself that he/she was being more honest with you than they were?