Lena Dunham has admitted to cheating on her long-term ex-boyfriend Jack Antonoff with a childhood flame during a particularly difficult period in their relationship.
Writing candidly in her new memoir, Famesick, which was released this Tuesday, the Girls creator revealed that she reached out to her middle school boyfriend, Nick, while she was recovering from a hysterectomy in 2017.
Dunham, 39, explained that she was struggling with a growing dependency on medication and a sense of disconnection from Antonoff at the time, leading her to seek comfort elsewhere while the music producer was away on tour.
The actress described a specific night when she met up with Nick after asking him to cheer her up following her surgery.
In a remarkably blunt passage from the book, Dunham recalls telling him in a taxi that she had been through something “awful” and didn’t want to discuss it, but needed him to sleep with her and “do all of the work.”
She wrote that the encounter provided a sense of euphoria she had previously only found through intravenous medication, noting that the act made her feel “alive” even as she grappled with the guilt of being an “adulteress.”
Despite the infidelity, Dunham recalls a heartbreakingly tender end to her five-year relationship with the Bleachers frontman.
She describes a morning over breakfast where she sobbed while telling Antonoff they both knew they weren’t making each other happy anymore.
According to the memoir, they put their foreheads together and wept, acknowledging each other as their first great love.
When a “delusional” Dunham asked if they could still go on dates, Antonoff reportedly told her they could do whatever she wanted, both feeling a sense of relief and “euphoric with adoration” as they decided to part ways.
At the time of their split in early 2018, representatives described the breakup as “amicable,” though these new revelations suggest a much more complex and painful story behind the scenes.
Since their time together, both have moved on and married other people; Dunham wed musician Luis Felber in 2021, while Antonoff married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023.
