2017 was an inauspicious year for actress Lena Dunham. In addition to claiming the rape accusations against Girls writer Murray Miller were “misreported,” Dunham sparked criticism for surrendering her rescue dog in favor of two purebred poodles, and even inspired a Twitter account parodying her seemingly daily apologies. And in December, she split from boyfriend Jack Antonoff, E! News reported yesterday.

For the five and a half years of their relationship, Dunham and Antonoff were the Jewish power couple that never was. Antonoff is a talented songwriter, known for his collaborations with Sarah Bareilles, Lorde, and other pop stars, but his tolerance for Dunham’s problematic behavior was endless and concerning. In 2015, for example, she labelled herself a “sexual predator” in jest, then fell into a “rage spiral” when news outlets took her accounts of molesting her sister seriously. She also published an anti-Semitic satire in the New Yorker comparing her Jewish boyfriend (a.k.a Antonoff) to a dog, with the added insult of portraying him as a feeble asthmatic accustomed to being “waited on hand and foot.” It’s surprisingly sexist piece for someone raised by a Jewish mother, stereotyping them as co-dependent and “sucked dry by their children.”

Although Dunham called Antonoff her “life partner” in the past, she was one of the many celebrities to use same-sex marriage as a delaying tactic. (A word to straight couples: that was always a terrible excuse. Skip the “protest” and admit that you weren’t ready to get hitched.) Just before DOMA was repealed, Dunham said she envisioned their wedding party as “our two sisters in tuxedos,” still more eager to be “gay adjacent” than to commit to Antonoff. This fall, she tweeted about mistaking his “talking shit” about her for proposal planning, suggesting that Antonoff may have initiated the breakup. His accomplishments were often overshadowed by his association with Dunham, and as a three-time Grammy Award winner, he deserves better publicity in 2018.

Antonoff has yet to comment on the split, but Dunham recently Instagrammed this quote: “Starting over is the beautiful moment where you choose yourself.”

It’s an ironic statement for the more blatantly narcissistic of the pair, whose insistence on her own perspective has both established and threatened her career.

Better luck next time, Jack.

Images via Wikimedia

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Over at Vulture, there’s a revealing, intimate profile of fun. guitarist and songwriter-to-the-pop-stars Jack Antonoff—AKA Mr. Lena Dunham—that’s well worth your time.

Antonoff—who rose to fame in 2012 on the back of fun.’s sweeping, exuberant pop hit “We Are Young“—talks openly about the death of his 13-year-old sister when he was 18, right before 9/11, and how the two tragedies shaped his psyche, his creative life, his germ-phobia (he wipes down airplane seats with anti-bacterial wipes before traveling), and his songwriting ethos. What emerges is a frank portrait of a sensitive, neurotic, likable thirty-going-on-sixty-year-old with a penchant for crazy socks and sweaters. Writes Jada Yuan:

Sarah lost her lifelong battle with brain cancer when she was 13 and Antonoff was a senior in high school, but his adolescence might have been marked even more profoundly by his family’s struggle than her dying, by those memories of hospitals and growing up in constant fear. “It’s not groundbreaking psychological stuff,” says Antonoff of his “germ issues.” “It’s coming from a very obvious place. You know, the scarring on the lung is not a big fucking deal. It’s just that in the context of my life, it just stresses me out. My real sickness is how I deal with it psychologically.” He’s seeing a psychopharmacologist and really needs to find a new therapist, but he gets stressed out thinking about starting over—not because he has a problem bringing up painful things but because of “the boredom of catching someone up.” He laughs. “Anyway, long answer to your question about why I drink tea. You realize that’s how this started, right?” We’ve been talking for only ten minutes.

We also learn that Antonoff can pull off “vaguely Nazi looks,” like a shaved head, because his face is “so Jewish.” His mom still buys him lunch, even though he’s a platinum-selling artist. And at his parents’ place in New Jersey he has a walk-in closet filled with Star Wars tchotchkes, which spill “out of three full bookcases and guarded by life-size cardboard cutouts of a Storm Trooper and Obi-Wan Kenobi.” His bar mitzvah, not surprisingly, was Star Wars-themed. It’s a credit to Antonoff that this detail is neither tragically nerdy nor annoyingly twee—it’s just endearing, like he is.

Image: Mat Hayward / Shutterstock.com

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If you ever needed proof that real life Lena Dunham is seriously more balanced than her Girls character Hannah Horvath, here it is. For artist Miranda July’s “We Think Alone” project—in which collaborators like Etgar Keret, Kirstin Dunst, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar share their intimate emails— Dunham shared a love letter she wrote to boyfriend and musician Jack Antonoff, and it’s kind of beautiful.

Read below, and if you’re a happy crier, grab the tissues. Nothing like a late-mornin’ love-sob.

———- Forwarded message ———- From: Lena Dunham Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 5:14 AM Subject: a love letter to Jack M. Antonoff To: Jack Antonoff

Dearest Baby,
I’m trying to keep a journal on this trip. Historically I have done really poorly with a journal. The idea of writing without an audience seemed futile at best and like a bad voice over on a cancelled ABC show at worst. When I was little I left my journal out, open, for my parents to find (then hid behind the counter waiting for them to read it so I could be incensed.) But somehow my book makes every piece of writing feel as though it has an eventual home (maybe that’s how your album feels?) and gives record-keeping a kind of fullness it never had before. Which is good, because my old move was to write these long belabored emails to people at home and find a way to enjoy my travels by imagining them imagining me enjoying my travels. I think I can enjoy my travels on my own this time, but I did have one revelation:

I was walking through a beautiful Indian garden this morning (Lodi garden! The oldest in the city! It looks like if someone crushed Versailles with a giant Doc Marten) and passed a big green pond with a dozen disorderly swans. All the old people in my party were cooing about the swans but I was focused on this young couple, late teens or early twenties, curled up on a bench talking really animatedly. We spent 40 minutes walking around the garden and when we circled back they were still there, chatting like fiends. And And I thought of you, like always, and I felt I could spend four days on a bench with you and it wouldn’t be enough time to hear all the stories you have to tell– I literally want to know everything you have ever seen and what you felt like while you were seeing it. And I will be so much better my whole life for knowing those things.

I love you,
Lena

(Photo by lenadunham/Instagram)

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