An Ina Garten divorce revelation? Nobody noticed that coming!
From Britney Spears’ book to Prince Harry’s royal tell-all, the world’s most well-known figures have lots to say.
The Barefoot Contessa has been a family identify 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 incorrect?

When did Ina Garten ponder a divorce?
Today, Ina Garten and longtime husband Jeffrey Garten are nonetheless very a lot a pair. However she did contemplate a divorce.
In her new memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens, the long-lasting Ina Garten particulars how she and Jeffrey separated — and practically divorced.
This was again within the Seventies. Ina was already busy working the Barefoot Contessa. This specialty meals retailer would in the future catapult her into turning into a family identify.


As Folks explains of their preview of Ina Garten’s new memoir, the couple’s near-divorce within the Seventies occurred when she was busy as knowledgeable.
Ina recalled that Jeffrey “anticipated a spouse that may make dinner” throughout these years.
“There have been sure roles that we performed, and I discovered them actually annoying,” she expressed. “I felt that if I simply hit the pause button, I’d get his consideration.”
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 house to the Hamptons on weekends.
“Once I purchased Barefoot Contessa, I shattered our conventional roles – took a baseball bat to them and left them in items,” she writes in her memoir. “Whereas I used to be nonetheless cooking, cleansing, buying, managing on the retailer, I used to be doing it as a businesswoman, not a spouse.”
Ina Garten defined: “My tasks made it inconceivable for me to even take into consideration the rest. There was no expectation about who bought house from work first and what they need to do, as a result of I by no means bought house from work!”


“When Jeffrey got here on weekends, he was a distraction. I didn’t pay sufficient consideration to him,” Ina Garten describes in her memoir. “I simply wished everybody to go away me alone so I may think about the shop.”
Her ebook particulars: “Jeffrey was absolutely fashioned and dwelling the life he wished to reside.”
Ina then bluntly writes: “I wasn’t, and I wouldn’t be capable to determine who I used to be or what I wished except I used to be by myself. I wanted that freedom.”


That is how the separation got here to be
“I considered it lots, and at my lowest level, I questioned if the one reply could be to break up,” Ina Garten confesses within the ebook. “I liked Jeffrey and didn’t need to shock — or damage — him, so I’d begin by suggesting we pause for a separation.”
She expresses: “It was the toughest factor I ever did. I advised him that I wanted to be by myself. I didn’t say whether or not it was for now … or without end. In true Jeffrey type, he mentioned, ‘In case you really feel like you want to be by yourself, you want to do it.’”
Ina Garten writes: “He packed his bag and went house to Washington with no plan to return again. I buried my feelings and threw myself into my work.”
In the end, the 2 simply sat down to speak. “I simply couldn’t reside with him in a standard ‘man and spouse’ relationship. Jeffrey hadn’t accomplished something incorrect. He was simply doing what each man earlier than him had accomplished. However we have been dwelling in a brand new period, and that conduct wasn’t okay with me anymore. I had modified.”
She mentioned that, in the event that they have been to remain collectively, he’d want to take a seat 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 an ideal signal that patriarchal brainrot about gender roles and submissive wives has a higher probability of ending a wedding than prolonging it.