Lena Dunham Crossed Paths with Ex Jack Antonoff at Taylor Swift’s Wedding. Everything She’s Said About Their Romance

Alex RossWed, July 8, 2026 at 11:00 PM UTC

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Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff in 2017; Dunham’s memoir FamesickCredit: Jim Spellman/WireImage -

Lena Dunham reflects on her five-year relationship with Jack Antonoff and its challenges in her memoir Famesick

Dunham shares how her health struggles, including endometriosis and a hysterectomy, impacted their relationship

Dunham dated Antonoff from 2012 to 2017

Lena Dunham delves into the nuances of her romance with Jack Antonoff, whom she dated from 2012 to 2017, in her memoir Famesick.

Dunham, 40, often describes Antonoff as a “good man,” but the once deep and meaningful romance she says they shared soon struggled to thrive as her health suffered.

Dunham was diagnosed with endometriosis at 26 and had a hysterectomy in 2017 after the condition, in which tissue similar to the uterine lining grows in places it doesn’t belong, left her in constant pain from damage “worse than anyone had imagined.”

Dunham would later go on to wed musician Luis Felber in 2021.

On July 8, PEOPLE confirmed that Bleachers frontman Antonoff and actress wife Margaret Qualley, who wed in August 2023, had separated.

Dunham says Antonoff’s sister, Rachel, first helped set the pair up

One day, at Rachel’s office in midtown where Lena was trying on dresses for a premiere, Rachel suggested she meet Jack.

“‘He’s the funniest, weirdest, coziest person alive,’” Dunham recalls Rachel saying.

“Cozy, I told her, was my favorite word. ‘He’s in a band, and he meets all the wrong kinds of girls—they all want to be models, or scenesters. But he’s just a sweet boy who loves to be cozy.’”

“‘You should date my brother’” seemed like the kind of thing someone says and forgets about — after all, Rachel and I had met for a total of thirty minutes — but a few days later, an email landed in my inbox.

“Hi. This is Jack. Rachel says you’re funny and she thinks we would really get along. Maybe we should have dinner. Or if not, no worries. Bye!”

Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff in Beverly Hills in February 2017Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagicDunham says Antonoff apologized to her after her first excision surgery for endometriosis

After her first surgery, Dunham says Antonoff came to visit her in the hospital.

“He bent over me then — my puffy blue surgical cap still on, foggy from propofol, swaddled in heated blankets— and he wept. Long, heaving sobs,” she writes.

“Maybe it was the relief that comes from someone you love waking up after anesthesia. Maybe it was a flood of empathy. But in his cries, what I heard was, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Sorry, I thought, that he hadn’t taken me more seriously. The doctor’s words had alerted him to the irrefutable truth of my pain, and he couldn’t bear having ignored it. But what I hear now, ten years later, is: “I’m so sorry you have to live with this. And I’m so sorry that I can’t.”

Dunham writes about an unnamed “teen pop star” whom Antonoff spent lots of time working with

Though Dunham never explicitly reveals the pop star’s identity, she does note that her then-music producer boyfriend was heavily involved in the star’s career, and that the artist called her “Aunt Lena.”

“One night, as he was sitting in the bathtub brushing his teeth, I suggested that perhaps their closeness was striking an odd note, that she wanted something from him that he couldn’t give — or maybe it was just the way that they received my presence, like a ghost, like two fifth-grade bullies pretending not to notice the object of their scorn: ‘Did you hear something?’ ‘No, nothing,’” she writes in Famesick.

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“Jack turned to me, curled like a kidney bean in the water I’d been draining and replenishing for hours, and said, ‘You’re just mad because she doesn’t want to be your friend.’ And he was right.”

Dunham chronicles the difficult decision to break up with Antonoff

“Looking back, it’s hard to understand why two people with seemingly endless options, financial freedom and almost nothing that they still enjoyed doing together besides talking s--- about the occasional third party would not simply break up,” she writes, ever-honest, in the memoir.

After five years together, Dunham says the relationship was clearly no longer serving them.

“We were acting like we had six school-aged children we were in danger of losing custody of should we end the relationship,” she explains. “But one of the last things we still shared was the sense that our ability to keep the relationship going was directly proportional to our inherent goodness.”

“This isn’t to say that we didn’t love each other. It’s taken years for me to be able to tap back into the easy rapport we shared, the sense of being known without having to say very much, the sweetness we could show each other, even—and maybe especially— after the biggest battles.”

Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff in Beverly Hills in October 2015Credit: Jason Merritt/GettyDunham admits she cheated on Antonoff at the very end of their relationship

Before the couple officially called it quits, Dunham began hooking up with somebody she only calls “Nick” in the memoir.

At the time, she was also still actively coping with the aftermath of her hysterectomy.

Of how she justified her transgression to herself, she writes: “I tried to calm my sheer terror by telling myself I was finally home from a bad dream. I had fixed myself, proved I could be the freaky, sexy, lively young woman [Jack] fell in love with. I had exorcised the demon. In a way, I had f---ed Nick for both our sakes, to make our house a home again. It would all be better now.”

Dunham and Antonoff broke up in December 2017.

“‘No matter what happens,’ I said, ‘you will always be my first great love,’” Dunham recalls herself saying during the official split.

“‘And you’ll be mine,’ he wept. In the relief, he looked so young and silly, so wise and present, so exactly as I’d found him,” she writes.

Dunham says she didn’t want ‘Famesick’ to simply be “a list of grievances”

Lena Dunham in New York City in April 2026Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty

Dunham says it’s in her nature to want to protect the people she once loved, and as such, she didn’t want Famesick to be an “airing somebody else’s list of dirty laundry.”

“My hope is that whoever is reading understands that it’s not a victim narrative and it’s not a narrative in which there are wrongdoers. It’s about also how you can have really beautiful relationships that don’t work because of the specific moment in time,” she tells PEOPLE.

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Lena Dunham’s new memoir Famesick is available now, wherever books are sold.

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