Divorce converts shared intimacy into poison because exposure reveals its weakness

Evidence

Divorce, even between good-natured, amiable, educated people, is apt to stir up a dust-cloud that covers and discolours all it touches. It is as if the sphere of intimacy, the unwatchful trust of shared life, is transformed into a malignant poison as soon as the relationship in which it flourished is broken off. Intimacy between people is forbearance, tolerance, refuge for idiosyncrasies. If dragged into the open, it reveals the moment of weakness in it, and in a divorce such outward exposure is inevitable. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 27

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s interest in how the market’s universal inhumanity invades the last human cells, including the ‘small acts of decorum’ impulse — here the private is re-absorbed into the legal order.