Some people seem to do everything on autopilot. You know they're not really there when you're talking to them. They exist inside their own heads as images they've created for themselves, mostly based on external expectations. Other people don't seem to exist for them at all. They don't have lives, they have lifestyles. Although if you have no real sense of personhood I suppose it's hard to grant it to others.

It's not a gender thing, because both men and women do it - although they seem to do it in different ways, with a slant towards different idealised fantasies.

This - tangentially - is why I'm so implacably hostile to so much advertising and marketing. There's nothing wrong with selling products, but selling unrealistic fantasies is a rape of people's ability to dream and create new possibilities for themselves on their own terms. It also seeps its poison into people's ability to make honest connections with others.