US Vice PresidentJ.D. Vancehas admitted he was'obsessed'with his now wifeUshawhile still in a long-term relationship with another woman,Mary, according to excerpts from his upcoming memoirCommunion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, which is due to be published in the United States on 16 June.
The book is presented as an account ofVance's early adulthood, his conversion to Catholicism and his journey from working-class Ohio to national office. But the passages now circulating focus less on politics and more on his romantic life, revisiting his college-era relationship with Mary and the moment he first became fixated on fellow Yale Law School student Usha, who would later become his wife and the mother of his children.
In the memoir, Vance describes Mary as a steady presence for several years during and after college. He writes that they wanted similar things from life, including 'a nice house, a decent job and a couple of kids', and says his family liked her.
'My family got along with her fine. No relationship is perfect, but nothing seemed like a deal breaker,' he writes.
Even so, Vance admits he felt emotionally detached. He says that although the relationship seemed stable from the outside, he could never shake the feeling that his investment in it was limited.
'Still, I could never escape the feeling that, as much as I liked her, if she were to dump me the next day, I'd get over it quickly,' he writes. He goes on to assess Mary in strikingly clinical terms, saying he could judge her by 'objective criteria' and conclude she was 'mostly great', before asking himself: 'But would I sob if she broke up with me? No way. Isn't that a problem?'
Those lines are framed by Vance as a moment of emotional uncertainty rather than an admission of wrongdoing. Even so, they have fuelled questions online about whether his attention had already shifted elsewhere before the relationship formally ended.
The turning point came after Vance moved to Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. He writes that a few months after voicing doubts about Mary, they were still together in a long-distance relationship while he was in his first year.
He describes taking a late-night walk through a cold and rainy New Haven, with fog covering the streets. By his own account, he was thinking not about Mary, but about another student, Usha Bala Chilukuri.
'A few months after that conversation, I was still dating Mary, now long distance, from New Haven, Connecticut, where I was a couple of months into my first year of law school,' he writes. 'I was walking late at night on an unusually cold and rainy fall day. New Haven is spooky in the fog, and the rain had emptied out the streets. And the whole time I was thinking about another student: Usha Bala Chilukuri.'
Source: International Business Times UK
