Ina Garten Once Considered Divorcing Her Husband, Jeffrey: "The Hardest Thing I Ever Did"
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Ina Garten's highly anticipated memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, comes out in just two weeks, but an excerpt has already captured the internet's attention—because it deals with the moment Ina considered divorcing her husband, Jeffrey.
Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir
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"When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles — took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces," Ina writes. "While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife. My responsibilities made it impossible for me to even think about anything else. There was no expectation about who got home from work first and what they should do, because I never got home from work!"
"When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay enough attention to him. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store. Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live. I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to figure out who I was or what I wanted unless I was on my own. I needed that freedom."
"I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce," she continues. "I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — or hurt — him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation. It was the hardest thing I ever did. I told him that I needed to be on my own. I didn’t say whether it was for now... or forever. In true Jeffrey form, he said, 'If you feel like you need to be on your own, you need to do it.' He packed his bag and went home to Washington with no plan to come back. I buried my emotions and threw myself into my work."
They did the trial separation, and when they reunited in D.C., Jeffrey asked her, "What can I do to change your mind?" She writes, "I just couldn’t live with him in a traditional 'man and wife' relationship. Jeffrey hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just doing what every man before him had done. But we were living in a new era, and that behavior wasn’t okay with me anymore. I had changed." Ina told Jeffrey that she wanted him to see a therapist, and six weeks passed, and they were officially back together.
"Moving forward, we could be equals who took care of each other. It wouldn’t happen overnight, but if we worked toward the same goal, we could change things together," she writes.
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