An Ina Garten divorce revelation? No one noticed that coming!

From Britney Spears’ e-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 flawed?

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

When did Ina Garten ponder a divorce?

These days, Ina Garten and longtime husband Jeffrey Garten are nonetheless very a lot a pair. But she did take into account a divorce.

In her new memoir, Be Ready When The Luck Happens, the enduring Ina Garten particulars how she and Jeffrey separated — and almost 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.

Ina Garten attends twenty eighth Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 13, 2024. (Photo Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)

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

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

Both Ina and Jeffrey Garten had labored on the White House. However, she had stop her DC job to run the Barefoot Contessa. Jeffrey stayed in DC throughout the week, coming house 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 throughout the twenty eighth Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 13, 2024. (Photo Credit: Rob Kim/Getty Images 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 Festival on October 12, 2019. (Photo Credit: Brad Barket/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

This 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.”

Ultimately, the 2 simply sat down to discuss. “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 stated that, in the event that they had been to keep collectively, he’d want to sit down with a {couples} therapist. He did. And, Ina praises, it took him “one hour” to perceive.

That is a robust story. And, maybe, a useful 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.

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