The “Girls” creator details the affair with a former middle-school sweetheart in her explosive new memoir, “Famesick.”

Lena Dunham admits to cheating on Jack Antonoff in her explosive new memoir

The "Girls" creator details the affair with a former middle-school sweetheart in her explosive new memoir, "Famesick."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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on April 14, 2026 9:53 a.m. ET

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Lena Dunham and Jack Antonoff in 2013. Credit:

Larry Busacca/WireImage

Lena Dunham is back to doing what she does best: telling the truth in stunning detail.

The celebrated and often controversial writer, filmmaker, and *Girls *mastermind is out with a new memoir, *Famesick*, which published on Tuesday. One of the more explosive revelations from the book comes during Dunham's discussion of the end of her five-year relationship with the musician Jack Antonoff.

Dunham recalls pointing out that Antonoff's "closeness" with an unnamed "teen pop star" whose album he was producing had begun "striking an odd note." At the same time, she details for the first time embarking on an affair with a former middle-school flame named Nick, which ushered in the final break from Antonoff.

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As their relationship deteriorated amid Dunham's health issues, she noted, "I had never stopped flirting—I mean, I wasn't dead yet — but I had observed careful boundaries, never taking it far enough that I could be declared out of bounds. If I'd wanted to look, perhaps I may have seen that Jack was not observing them as closely as I was."

She had "had seen myself as some kind of half wife," but after a hysterectomy "changed the game" in late 2017, she wrote to a former middle school boyfriend named Nick "with impunity, saying l'd just had major surgery and I needed to be cheered up. 'Meet me by the bridge? Bring me a stuffed animal?' I got an answer back in less than a minute: 'I'm already running.'"

Dunham writes that she "let my lips wander slowly across his face and onto his, and I remembered how my high school friend Marissa's mother once told us how, when she conducted an affair in the 1970s, cheating on her first husband with Marissa's father, she insisted on wearing a red velvet cape with a hood everywhere she went." What she wore was "a sweater the size of an airstream trailer, but I too, was ready to do adultery."

The cover of Lena Dunham's 'Famesick'.

Kissing progressed as Dunham says she told Nick, "I've been through something awful. I don't want to talk about it, but I need you to f--- me and I need you to do all of the work.' 'I can make that happen,' he said."

Dunham writes that the affair lasted several days.

"On the third night, my parents left town, and Nick met me at their place, where he went down on me while I watched the steady flames hiss in the electric fireplace," she details. "Afterward, we took a bath, washing each other's hair at the same time, then f---ed again on top of my parents' quilt. He looked deep in my eyes as he moved over me and said: 'You're making me want to cut the brakes on your boyfriend's car.'"

When Antonoff got home from tour, she crawled into bed with him after another night with Nick.

"I tried to calm my sheer terror by telling myself I was finally home from a bad dream," she writes. "I had fixed myself, proved I could be the freaky sexy lively young woman he 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. I fell asleep to the rhythm of Jack's breathing, like I had been doing for almost six years."

But she wasn't able to hide her true feelings. She broached the subject of them not "making each other happy" the following morning, "before sobs overtook me." Dunham writes that the former couple "put our foreheads together and wept" before breaking up. "'No matter what happens,' I said, 'you will always be my first great love.' 'And you'll be mine,' he wept."

The twosome had a therapy appointment scheduled for the Monday after they ended things. They went together to "discuss what came next." She writes, "Looking back, there's something oddly adorable about a pair of childless thirty-year-olds thinking that anything comes next."

"As he hugged me goodbye in the doorway, he was more careful and tender than he'd been with me in a long time. It made me want to start from the beginning. That night he texted: 'What do you feel like?'" she writes. "It was confusing to explain. On the one hand, my heart was so heavy, I thought it might sink down and replace my uterus. I couldn't think too far ahead or too far behind without breaking down into hysterical tears. On the other hand, Nick was in my makeshift bedroom, likely with his head between my legs while I sent the message: 'pretty strange.'"

Dunham went on to date Nick, with twosome even getting engaged as they both struggled with substance abuse. (Dunham had previously revealed her private engagement but never revealed the details.) The writer subsequently went to rehab and they ended things for good. Dunham married husband Luis Felber in 2021.

*Famesick *is now available in bookstores.

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