John Lennon Was so ‘Normal’ It Seemed Like He Was Joking After Cynthia Lennon Discovered His Affair
When Cynthia Lennon discovered John Lennon and Yoko Ono together, she was certain her marriage was over. She fled the home and spent several days away with friends. When she cautiously returned to the house, she expected to have a conversation about ending the marriage. Instead, Lennon reacted as though nothing had happened. Cynthia said he was so nonchalant that she thought he was playing a joke.
John Lennon hardly reacted after Cynthia Lennon discovered his affair
In 1968, Cynthia returned home from vacation to find Lennon and Ono in her kitchen, wearing bathrobes. When she asked Lennon to join her for dinner, he refused, leading her to believe the marriage was over. After several days at a friend’s house, she returned to the home she shared with Lennon.
“Walking in was difficult: I had no idea what I might find,” she wrote in her book John. “But the house was astonishingly normal. The sun shone, the curtains were drawn back, and everything was neat as a pin. Clearly, Dot had been hard at work. As I stood wondering who was home, Julian ran to me and leapt into my arms. It was wonderful to be able to hug him. At that moment, John wandered out of the den. ‘Oh hi,’ he said casually. ‘Where have you been?’”
Cynthia was so shocked by his behavior that she wasn’t sure how to respond.
“I stared at him. Surely he was joking,” she wrote. “But no, he seemed relaxed, normal, even pleased to see me — he came over and planted a kiss on my cheek.”
She said Lennon often avoided difficult conversations, but this felt like an impossible topic to ignore.
“Had it all been a nightmare?” she wrote. “Or was John truly capable of doing something like that, then dismissing it as unimportant? … But ignoring the fact that I’d found him with Yoko seemed a little like stepping round an elephant in the middle of the drawing room.”
John Lennon told Cynthia Lennon he wanted to make their relationship work
Several tense hours passed before they could discuss the matter. When they did, Lennon insisted that his affair with Ono meant little to him.
“It was evening before John and I had a chance to talk,” Cynthia wrote. “I had to steel myself for the confrontation we would usually avoid to ask him what was happening with Yoko. ‘Oh her?’ he said, as if surprised that I’d asked. ‘Nothing, it’s not important.’”
Cynthia said they had a better conversation than they’d had in years, at the end of which Lennon affirmed his desire to make their marriage work. And, given his behavior over the next several days, she believed him.
“For the next few days all seemed well,” she wrote. “John was in a good mood, Julian was happy to have us around, and I was daring to hope that we had got through the worst.”
She said that the way they talked during this time made her believe their marriage could move forward from the affair.
“Talking brought us closer,” Cynthia wrote. “We agreed that we wanted to go forward together, despite our differences. After all, we had always been different, and it had worked for us for ten years. Why should it not for the next ten?”
He began to pull away from her before long
The period of harmony did not last. Within a few days, Cynthia began to feel Lennon pulling away from her. She first felt it when Lennon turned down her offer to join him on a business trip to New York.
“John’s answer was a flat no,” she wrote. “He refused to look at me or discuss it. I felt my stomach tighten: he was distancing himself from me again. Over the next few days, he was irritable and withdrawn, and I felt a rising sense of panic because I couldn’t reach him.”
Cynthia decided to take a trip to Italy while Lennon was gone. She arrived at her hotel one night to a message from her husband: he wanted a divorce. By 1969, he had married Ono.
