Ina Garten Divorce Confession: ‘I Took A Baseball Bat’ to Marriage

An Ina Garten divorce revelation? Nobody noticed that coming!

From Britney Spears’ e-book to Prince Harry’s royal tell-all, the world’s most well-known figures have so much to say.

The Barefoot Contessa has been a family title for many years. And Ina’s marriage to Jeffrey Garten has lasted even longer.

When Ina confesses that she “took a baseball bat” to their marital roles and weighed separation vs divorce, followers are paying consideration. What went improper?

Ina Garten and Jeffrey Garten attend Disney’s ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ World Premiere on the Dolby Theatre on November 29, 2018. (Picture Credit score: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Pictures for Disney)

When did Ina Garten ponder a divorce?

Nowadays, Ina Garten and longtime husband Jeffrey Garten are nonetheless very a lot a pair. However she did think about a divorce.

In her new memoir, Be Prepared When The Luck Occurs, the long-lasting Ina Garten particulars how she and Jeffrey separated — and almost divorced.

This was again within the Nineteen Seventies. Ina was already busy working the Barefoot Contessa. This specialty meals retailer would sooner or later catapult her into changing into a family title.

Ina Garten attends twenty eighth Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Road on Could 13, 2024. (Picture Credit score: Michael Loccisano/Getty Pictures)

As Folks explains of their preview of Ina Garten’s new memoir, the couple’s near-divorce within the Nineteen Seventies occurred when she was busy as knowledgeable.

Ina recalled that Jeffrey “expected a wife that would make dinner” throughout these years.

“There were certain roles that we played, and I found them really annoying,” she expressed. “I felt that if I just hit the pause button, I would get his attention.”

Ina Garten ‘took a baseball bat’ to her marriage’s conventional roles

Each Ina and Jeffrey Garten had labored on the White Home. Nonetheless, she had give up her DC job to run the Barefoot Contessa. Jeffrey stayed in DC in the course of the week, coming residence to the Hamptons on weekends.

“When I bought Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our traditional roles –­ took a baseball bat to them and left them in pieces,” she writes in her memoir. “While I was still cooking, cleaning, shopping, managing at the store, I was doing it as a businesswoman, not a wife.”

Ina Garten defined: “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!”

Ina Garten speaks onstage in the course of the twenty eighth Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Road on Could 13, 2024. (Picture Credit score: Rob Kim/Getty Pictures for The Webby Awards)

“When Jeffrey came on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay enough attention to him,” Ina Garten describes in her memoir. “I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store.”

Her e-book particulars: “Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live.”

Ina then bluntly writes: “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.”

Ina Garten speaks onstage throughout a chat with Helen Rosner on the 2019 New Yorker Competition on October 12, 2019. (Picture Credit score: Brad Barket/Getty Pictures for The New Yorker)

That is how the separation got here to be

“I thought about it a lot, and at my lowest point, I wondered if the only answer would be to get a divorce,” Ina Garten confesses within the e-book. “I loved Jeffrey and didn’t want to shock — ­or hurt — ­him, so I’d start by suggesting we pause for a separation.”

She expresses: “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.’”

Ina Garten writes: “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.”

In the end, the 2 simply sat down to speak. “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.”

She mentioned that, in the event that they had been to remain collectively, he’d want to sit down down with a {couples} therapist. He did. And, Ina praises, it took him “one hour” to grasp.

That could be a highly effective story. And, maybe, a worthwhile life lesson for anybody who thinks that {couples} counseling is a waste of time. One session added, what, half a century to Ina Garten’s marriage. Half a century and counting.

Additionally? It’s a fantastic signal that patriarchal brainrot about gender roles and submissive wives has a larger likelihood of ending a wedding than prolonging it.