The Food Network star said it was 'the hardest thing I ever did.'
opens up for the first time in her new memoir, "Be Ready When the Luck Happens," about a challenging period in her marriage to husband Jeffrey Garten.on Tuesday, Ina Garten recalled the period after she quit her job at the White House, where she and Jeffrey Garten were both working at the time, to run Barefoot Contessa, then a specialty food store in Westhampton Beach, New York.
"I didn't pay enough attention to him," she continued. "I just wanted everyone to leave me alone so I could concentrate on the store. Jeffrey was fully formed and living the life he wanted to live. 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."Initially she said she thought of asking him for divorce but opted for a separation.
It was then, she said, that he asked her, "What can I do to change your mind?" She said he did not understand "that I doubted we could make our relationship work, and that we might be heading for divorce.""I just couldn't live with him in a traditional 'man and wife' relationship," she wrote. "Jeffrey hadn't done anything wrong. He was just doing what every man before him had done.
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