We may know what we like

We may know what we like, but we don't know what's good for us.

  Sally met Harry at a church sponsored dance.  He had been dragged there by his sister, on the premise that he might meet a "nice girl" for a change.  Harry tended to pick up girls in bars, and seemed to always go for the slutty ones.  He would have a brief, strictly physical relationship with them, and then drop them when the novelty wore off.

  Sally didn't know this, of course, just as she didn't know that Harry had been released from the penitentiary only weeks before, after serving three years of a five-to-ten year sentence for assault and battery of a hooker he had met in a strip club.  He had driven her to a wooded lot where he had sex with her, and then laughed when she demanded payment. She made the mistake of striking Harry, which sent him into a drunken rage.  He had blacked both her eyes, broken her nose, and kicked her out of his pickup truck.

  Sally didn't know this, of course.  All she knew was that here was a good looking guy by the small town standards of her Mississippi hometown, a guy who danced with her and actually kept coming back to ask her again.

  "Sure he's a little rough around the edges, but he just needs the love and support I can give him and he'll be fine", she told her mother.  Her mother was not convinced, but withheld her deeper fears, hoping that Sally might be right.

  They were married three months later.

  Now two years have gone by, they have a one year old daughter and another child is expected in six months.

  Sally is miserable.  Harry stays out nights, comes home drunk after spending most of his paycheck drinking, gambling and whoring.  When Sally complained, he slapped her so hard she fell down and heard a ringing in her ears for hours.  She hasn't dared to admit this to her mother, afraid that the admission would be met with an "I told you he was no good".

  She'd like to leave him, but is afraid to go, remembering the time he had told her he would kill her if she ever left him.  Sally was more than half certain that he would.

  So she stays on, crying herself to sleep on the many nights Harry doesn't come home until the wee hours of the morning.

***

  Don was the assistant manager of sales at a mid-sized office furniture factory.  He often dreamed of the day he would be promoted to Sales Manager.

  "I'll turn this place around", he thought. He had some sales campaign ideas which would catapult the company into the top ranks of the office furniture business.  Not only that, but his plan for a lucrative sales incentive bonus for the half dozen outside salesmen would be something none of the rival companies offered their employees.

  Don got his wish when the old manager retired.  He was promoted to the top sales position.  But he was also expected to carry out all the duties his previous post entailed, and these were many.  When he asked if he could hire a new assistant, he was rebuffed and told "We can't afford to give the sales force bonuses and hire someone else too".

  Don works ten or more hours a day, six days a week.  The salesmen complain that he isn't providing the leadership the old manager had.  Their sales performance has dropped off, so that they aren't earning the bonuses he had spoken so glowingly of, and some of them have voiced the opinion that he just isn't the man for the job.

  His home life suffers, due to his absence.  His wife complains that she has to carry the entire burden of taking care of the household and raising their two teenage sons.  She is threatening to leave and get a divorce.

***
We may know what we like, but we don't know what's good for us.