Yoko Ono Didn’t Know if Her Marriage Would ‘Ever Be the Same’ After John Lennon Publicly Humiliated Her

In 1972, John Lennon and Yoko Ono attended a party to watch the presidential election results. As it became increasingly clear that Richard Nixon would emerge victorious, Lennon grew drunker and drunker in an attempt to cope. By the end of the night, he was reportedly cheating on Ono in an extremely obvious manner. While Ono later said she could forgive him, she said she would not forget what he’d done to her.

Yoko Ono realized her marriage to John Lennon would not be the same after a party

In 1972, Lennon and Ono went to Jerry Rubin’s apartment to await the results of the presidential election between Nixon and George McGovern. The mood shifted unpleasantly as the night wore on, and, at one point, Lennon slipped away to have “loud, raucous” sex with another party guest. Through all of this, Ono and the other guests sat in mortified silence. 

“He was placing [his wife] in the most embarrassing position that you could ever place a woman in — having a romp in the hay in another room with thin walls while your wife was attending a small party and could hear everything,” the couple’s friend Elliot Mintz told People. “Yoko is a very stoic woman, but it would have severe consequences.”

Mintz had become a confidante to Lennon and Ono. The next morning, they both called him. During their conversation, Ono said that while this was not a marriage-ending event, it would permanently alter their relationship.

“I can forgive him, but I don’t know if I can ever forget what happened,” she said. “I don’t know if it will ever be the same.”

Yoko Ono and John Lennon temporarily separated afterward

Several months later, Ono confided in the couple’s assistant, May Pang.

“Listen, May,” Ono told Pang, per her book Loving John. “John and I are not getting along. We’ve been arguing. We’re growing apart.”

To Pang’s utter astonishment, Ono encouraged her to date Lennon. 

“May, it’s okay,” Ono told her. “I know he likes you. If he should ask you to go out with him, you should go.”

This began Lennon’s lost weekend, a period between 1973 and 1975 in which he and Ono were apart.

They reunited in 1975

While Lennon and Pang’s relationship developed into a love affair, he remained in contact with Ono the whole time. Their marriage had its problems, but they reunited because they loved each other.

“Well, it’s not a matter of who broke it up. It broke up,” he told Rolling Stone. “And why did we end up back together? (pompous voice) We ended up together again because it was diplomatically viable . . . come on. We got back together because we love each other.”

He said that the separation between them hadn’t worked out. While he was creatively prolific during his lost weekend, he also drank heavily, used drugs, and had violent outbursts.

“It didn’t work out. And the reaction to the breakup was all that madness,” he said. “I was like a chicken without a head.”