Ina Garten’s one-time breakup with Jeffrey left us shocked

Ina Garten fans are well aware of how much in love Garten and her husband, Jeffrey, are. Jeffrey has appeared on Garten’s show Barefoot Contessa and on her social media — and they always seem so happy together. And let’s not forget the entire cookbook Garten wrote for her husband, Cooking for Jeffrey.

With all that in mind, no one was prepared for the news that Garten and Jeffrey had once been separated. As People reports, in her upcoming memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, Garten reveals that she was unhappy in her marriage for a time, largely due to the constraints of traditional gender roles, which led to a period of separation in the 1970s.

Garten writes in her memoir, “When I bought Barefoot Contessa[a specialty food store]I disrupted our traditional roles.” She moved from D.C. to the Hamptons, and the business took up all of her time—even weekends when Jeffrey would commute to New York to visit her. She also acknowledges that “Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted. I wasn’t, and wouldn’t have been, able to figure out who I was or what I wanted if I hadn’t been on my own. I needed that freedom.”

So she asked him to separate. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I told him I had to be alone. I didn’t say if it was for now… or forever. In true Jeffrey style, he said, ‘If you feel like you have to be alone, you have to do it.’”

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Garten and Jeffrey have — thankfully — come to terms with therapy and equality

After Jeffrey agreed to separate, he stayed in Washington — no longer visiting him on weekends — and Garten focused on running her Hamptons store. They reconnected when Barefoot Contessa closed for the winter — and Jeffrey immediately asked what he could do to fix their marriage. Garten’s solution? Therapy.

In her memoir, she writes that she needed him to understand that they would not have a “traditional ‘man and wife’ relationship.” She continues, “We were living in a new era, and that was no longer okay for me.” Jeffrey immediately agreed to therapy, and Garten says he returned a changed man—after just one session. She writes, “He was so determined to convince me that he was serious about our marriage.” From that point on, they rebuilt their marriage as “equals.”

Thankfully, the separation was, by and large, short-lived, and the couple remained together for more than 50 years. And as she told Today in an interview, Garten now considers Jeffrey the “secret ingredient” to her happy life. Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, will be released on October 1.

Read the original article on The Daily Meal.