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.

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world

Ken, my husband, just smelled like he belonged to me. I'm not talking about hygiene. I'm talking about when you hug him, he either feels like a member of your tribe or not. It's their scent.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship /only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.

We are finally driven to monogamy not by morality but by exhaustion

I know some good marriages - marriages where both people are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other