Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen too much of your pain or envy or, perhaps more than anything, your shame, who, at the crucial moment, can be too easy to cut out, to exile, to expel, to kill off.
Interpretation
Intimate relationships can lead to complex emotions, making it easier to sever ties when pain or shame is involved.
In this quote, Daniel Mendelsohn highlights the paradox of intimacy in relationships, suggesting that closeness not only fosters love but can also expose vulnerabilities like pain, envy, and shame. He implies that those who know us deeply, and have witnessed our struggles, can become the easiest to distance ourselves from during moments of emotional conflict, underscoring the fragility of deep connections.
In practice
Using this quote during a relationship workshop to discuss the complexities of emotional closeness.
The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.
Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new married couple; in that of the lady particularly; it tells you that her lot is disposed of in this world; that you can have no hopes for her.
Every man rejoices twice when he has a partner in his joy. He who shares tears with us wipes them away. He divides them in two, and he who laughs with us makes the joy double.
I think that a lot of people don't understand how much discrimination transgender people actually face. They think that we're just kind of saying it to put it out there and get sympathy, but that's not true at all.
I want to spend my time with people who don't look to be respected. But such good people won't want to spend their time with me.
I sang with my father for over 50 years, and now all of a sudden he's gone, and I just dropped out.
What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.
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