Home Fronts

This chapter talks about how romantic partnerships sometimes became casualties to the conflict. It advances the argument that an innovative way to think about the catastrophic effect of war on relationships is that it upsets the established relationships between relationships. People were torn by decisions like whether to volunteer at shelters for internally displaced strangers or cook for their spouse. In line with the thesis that interpersonal relationships provide valuable insight into war, the intersectionality in this chapter is between different kinds of attachments. The chapter extends the concept that “people are like bombs,” which is an apt metaphor for the way of thinking about how contemporary conflicts erupt at multiple sites, including within interpersonal relationships.