Lena Dunham has admitted to cheating on her ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff with a childhood sweetheart during a particularly difficult period in their relationship.
Writing candidly in his new memoir, Famouswhich was released this Tuesday, the Girls The creator revealed that she contacted her high school boyfriend, Nick, while recovering from a hysterectomy in 2017.
Dunham, 39, explained that she was struggling with a growing dependence on medication and a feeling of disconnection from Antonoff at the time, leading her to seek solace elsewhere while the music producer was on tour.
The actress described a specific night she met with Nick after asking him to cheer her up after her surgery.
In a remarkably telling passage in the book, Dunham remembers telling him in a taxi that she had been through something “horrible” and didn’t want to talk about it, but needed him to sleep with her and “do all the work.”
She wrote that the encounter provided her with a sense of euphoria that she had previously only found through intravenous medication, noting that the act made her feel “alive” even as she struggled with the guilt of being an “adulteress.”
Despite the infidelity, Dunham remembers the heartbreakingly tender end of her five-year relationship with him. Bleachers leader.
She describes one morning over breakfast when she sobbed as she told Antonoff that they both knew they no longer made each other happy.
According to the memoirs, they put their foreheads together and cried, recognizing each other as their first great love.
When a “delusional” Dunham asked if they could still date, Antonoff allegedly told her they could do whatever she wanted, with both feeling a sense of relief and “euphoric adoration” when they decided to part ways.
At the time of their split in early 2018, reps described the split as “amicable,” though these new revelations suggest a much more complex and painful story behind the scenes.
Since they were together, they both moved on and married other people; Dunham married musician Luis Felber in 2021, while Antonoff married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023.
