Love Quote by Erica Jong

Jong goes for the jugular with a line that flatters nobody: friendship isn’t always a warm bath, it’s also a pressure valve for envy, insecurity, and the low-grade competition that polite society pretends not to run on. The provocation is the opening clause, “Friends love misery,” which lands like gossip delivered as diagnosis. She’s not arguing that friends are sadists; she’s pointing at the social function of someone else’s bad day. Misery equalizes. It makes the lucky friend legible, touchable, safely human.

The real sting is in the conditional: “especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty.” Those are the socially sanctioned advantages that can quietly corrode intimacy. When one person’s life looks effortless, the relationship tilts; admiration curdles into resentment, and the “successful” one becomes a walking reminder of what others lack. Jong suggests that misfortune becomes a kind of passport back into the group, proof you’re not lapping everyone forever. Your pain reassures people that the universe still distributes penalties.

The subtext is feminist and social-climbing-aware: women are often trained to be palatable, to sand down anything that reads as boast or threat, and beauty/success are coded as threats. If your peers can’t claim you through shared triumph, they’ll claim you through shared damage. Jong’s intent isn’t to cancel friendship; it’s to expose the shadow economy inside it, where empathy and relief can look uncomfortably alike.