I remember long ago my mother telling me and a good friend — as tears of teenage anguish flowed down our horrified faces after breaking up with our first boyfriends — that boys will come and go, but we girls will be friends forever.

Twenty years later, I'm still close to Hillary. She's fantastic — smart, generous, fun-loving. But she has a pig-headed husband. Her four lovely children are more anxious by the minute for being in a household with their angry father. I wonder why she's never said word one about leaving him.

It might be their house big enough for six, insurance and benefits, and the double income that can comfortably feed their clan. Security is not to be scoffed at.

Take my friend Angela. She's cool — artistic, determined, down-to-earth. But she knows she's not in love with her live-in boyfriend. In fact, he has proposed and she has declined. She stays. Why? They share a mortgage on a great loft. The down payment came from his father, and she worries if they separate she'll lose out and be back to student-like living - sharing an apartment with strangers. Ick.

Rob was away last weekend, and I spent a good part of it plodding around my apartment, relishing in its comforts, perfecting homebody-ness. "Mine, mine, mine," I thought, smiling, wrapped in my favorite blanket in my favorite chair. Actually, if Rob and I split, I could never afford the apartment myself.

Like Hillary and Angela, I stay because the unknown - single parenting, messy roommates, fewer comforts - seems worse than a bad relationship. 

If that scale tips, though, and I choose freedom over comfort, I know I'll still have my girls. And if Hillary or Angela ever make the hard decision to leave, they'll have me. My mom said so.