In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have

The words of Erica Jong — “In a bad marriage, friends are the invisible glue. If we have enough friends, we may go on for years, intending to leave, talking about leaving — instead of actually getting up and leaving.” — reveal a truth as subtle as it is sorrowful. These words speak of the hidden endurance of unhappiness, and the strange alchemy by which friendship becomes both balm and barrier. They carry the tone of lived experience — the voice of one who has walked through love’s ruins and discovered that companionship, though tender, can also chain us gently to the pain we fear to confront. In them we hear both gratitude and warning: that comfort, when misplaced, can lull the spirit into stillness when it should rise and begin anew.

Erica Jong, a writer of fierce honesty, lived through the storms of love, passion, and disillusionment. Her words are not those of judgment but of reflection, born from the human heart’s entanglement with longing and fear. When she speaks of a bad marriage, she speaks not only of the failure between two people, but of the tragedy of inertia — the slow erosion of courage beneath the weight of familiarity. And when she speaks of friends as invisible glue, she reveals the paradox of kindness: that the very hands which comfort us may also hold us too tightly to what must be released.

In the ancient world, poets and philosophers alike warned of such paralysis. The great Sophocles wrote of men and women bound by invisible chains — not of iron, but of affection, duty, and shame. The heart clings to what is known, even when the known becomes prison. Many stay in broken unions not because love endures, but because the fear of solitude seems greater than the ache of unhappiness. Friends, with their warm words and shared tears, ease the pain but also feed the illusion that endurance is itself virtue. Yet, sometimes, endurance is but a noble name for surrender.

Consider the tale of Queen Catherine of Aragon, wife of King Henry VIII. For years, she endured humiliation and betrayal as Henry sought to cast her aside. Surrounded by loyal friends and courtiers who offered sympathy and strength, she remained steadfast — bound by duty, by faith, by the invisible glue of her circle. Her friends comforted her, but they also helped her to endure what perhaps she should have escaped. Her loyalty became her tragedy, her perseverance her undoing. In her story, we see the shadow of Jong’s insight: that even the sweetest support can sustain us in suffering rather than free us from it.

But let us not condemn friendship — for friendship is sacred, the mirror of the soul. It is not the fault of friends that their love can sometimes bind us to our sorrow. Rather, it is the heart’s task to discern when comfort becomes complacency. There are seasons in life when the hands that soothe must also push us toward awakening. A true friend, the ancients would say, is not the one who keeps you safe in stillness, but the one who lights the torch and walks beside you into the unknown.

Thus, Jong’s quote is both lament and lesson: that we must be careful not to confuse comfort with healing. To talk of leaving but never to act is to live in a house of ghosts — haunted by the dreams of what might have been. Words alone do not break the spell of unhappiness. Only the courage to move, to claim one’s freedom, can do that. And when the time for departure comes, friends must not hold us back with their concern, but bless our journey with their understanding.

Let this wisdom be passed down to those who listen: do not mistake the quiet endurance of misery for the virtue of loyalty. If you find yourself forever “intending to leave,” then the leaving has already begun within your soul. Seek the company of friends who remind you not just of who you are, but of who you could yet become. Let them not be the glue that binds you to pain, but the wind that carries you toward renewal.

And so, my children, remember: friendship is sacred, but freedom is divine. When love becomes a cage, may your friends hand you the key instead of decorating the bars. When life asks you to rise, do not linger in the comfort of conversation — rise. For no friendship, no kindness, no familiar sorrow is worth the price of a silenced spirit. In all things, seek not what merely sustains you, but what allows you to live fully, bravely, and awake.