Lena Dunham threw herself into the dating scene "with the abandon of a grandma of ten shopping duty-free" following her break-up from Jack Antonoff.
The ‘Girls’ creator split from the Fun guitarist in December 2017 after being with him for five years and that split came in the wake of her undergoing a hysterectomy due to endometriosis – a condition that results in the tissue that lines the womb being found outside the reproductive organ.
Lena decided to throw herself into the world of online dating and used a "thirst-trap picture in some plus-size panties" posted on Instagram to entice potential suitors and had some dates with a man called ‘Jeremy’ who "slid into" her "DMs" with her even visiting his house after getting to know him on the social media platform.
However, the 32-year-old actress’ soon realised the dating game had changed due to the #MeToo movement, with America guys reassessing the way they acted around women.
Writing an essay about her experiences for Vogue, she revealed: "After half a decade with the same person, I had returned to my dating life with the abandon of a grandma of ten shopping duty-free. I had missed all of this: the anxiety of constructing a new identity worth wanting, the jittery caffeine-high moments before the first kiss, and an introduction to someone’s second personality, the one they have when lust is unleashed. It’s always amazed me how people transform once sex is introduced … But when I emerged onto the free market, what I found was a vastly changed world. Among its many reverberations, the #MeToo movement had made any sensible or sensitive man reconsider his impact on the women he has encountered over the years. As a survivor of sexual assault and dozens of trespasses, I was, of course, overjoyed that consent was now a part of the everyday vocabulary. But that conversation around consent – the echoes of ‘Is this OK?’ – served as a reminder of the fact that I was having sex at all. And sex is something I feel infinite shame about and can enjoy only if I’m so caught up in it that my awareness of the act is almost entirely obliterated by the intensity of the approach."
Lena is yet to meet a man who she could contemplate spending the rest of her life and it has made re-evaluate what she wants in a man in all aspects of a relationship.
She said: "I know what it is to be in love, and I liked it. But the bigger issue is, I know what it’s like to make a home with someone, and I loved it. It’s safe. It’s free of shame and pain and humiliation. It was heaven, eating Indian food in front of old episodes of ‘Strangers with Candy’, and it relegated me to a life without arousal. This moment in history has forced me to ask why I want what I want, and to consider all the societal forces (gender presentation, race, privilege) that allow me to want it in the first place."
Lena Dunham committed to online dating after split from Jack Antonoff
