I have seen it so many times, this corporate love-bombing, by which a corporation starts out offering what is best for the customer, so as to lure them into doing business, and then compromises the goods or services to make the deal sweeter for the corporation—hoping either that the customer won’t notice, or won’t care enough to leave the relationship.

It is the time-honored play of narcissists, long used in business, religion, and romance—just to name a few areas. And it works so well because most of us in this world who are not narcissists ourselves are pushovers who are not entirely capable of looking out for our own best interests—especially if there’s going to be inconvenience or emotional stress involved in making the change.

How interesting, then, that both inconvenience and emotional stress are involved in staying! Somehow, we discount what we are already enduring, while assuming that setting ourselves free from it will be considerably worse.