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The world of exile is not a world of men alone, and many women followed their husbands and fathers during their banishment. The modalities and places of action thus more closely involved couples and families into political struggles. In communities that were often divided and plagued by rumours and controversies, intimacy often became an issue of power. The public and private spheres no longer had precise boundaries. It is through two particular cases, those of adulterous couples and those of estranged parents and children, that we will try to better understand the part played by emotions, distance and also the will to maintain a bourgeois ethos within the exiles’ outlook. The central example is that of the Herzen couple, and their relationship with their children. Was it an exceptional case or a representative example of how relationships can be affected by life in exile? Does private violence, both in words and in deeds, allow us to shift our gaze and uncover a new reading of the divisions and anxieties that some of the exiles carry within them?