RangerMIke
Master Don Juan
My completely unscientific opinion... %50 are straight up unhappy, 30% are 'content', 20% are happy. Only 1/5 of all marriages at the end of 10 years are happy. Of all the married couples I know, the only ones that are genuinely happy are ones where the women either doesn't work but is involved with kids or some organization that she cares about, or she has some low paying job that is more like a hobby... and the husband makes a really good living."Half" is an understatement.
I'd say 80% of them are not happy.
But still they're glued to each other, and pretend they are being happy. Why? Because they are on auto-pilot, like you said, because they're simply too coward to even admit that they are not as happy as they think they are. And they are cowards because even the slightest idea of being alone scares them sh!tless. That's why.
The 'content' ones are just basically roommates, with occasional sex... basically friends with benefits who happen to live together. However, they have common interests and enjoy each other's company.
I like your comment "pretending to be happy", that is so true. You would never know from their social media accounts that they are as miserable as they are... it's the damned thing. It's perfectly normal for new couples to be all over each other professing their joy over the internet. But I can almost guarantee that if you have a couple still doing this sh1t after 2 years or later... something is going sideways.