If you're feeling less medieval - less ahmandi of Arc - the other analogy that I've imagined is to pantyhose. (Not that I have direct experience with wearing them, though I do have a bit of history in helping to remove them.) For executives and other in the corporate world, donning pantyhose is a professional necessity but not a comfortable one. A sort of bearable evil. And mostly you don't notice them during the day - little hitches and itches, small annoyances, but mostly subliminal. But when you get home, how long does it take before you're thinking: "please God, just let me get out of these things?" And how do you feel when that happens?

Just a thought experiment.

S.