Judy Blume Admits Cheating on First Husband in Biography
judy blume said in a new biography that she had affairs during her first marriage, including a sex life she says she hid until an STD scare forced the issue. The admission adds a private detail to the public record of a writer who was 21 when she married John Blume in 1959.
Blume told biographer Mark Oppenheimer, "It was building, you know? I wanted to be out there. I wanted to be free. I wanted to sleep with whoever I wanted to sleep with. I wanted all those sixties things that I missed." That quote, in Judy Blume: A Life, puts the marriage’s breakdown in Blume’s own terms rather than in hindsight.
Mark Oppenheimer and the book
Oppenheimer wrote that at a conference a married editor of children’s books came on to Blume and she went to bed with him, although they did not have intercourse. He also wrote that on a vacation without John or the children, Blume had sex with "a very young guy at the beach." Those details turn the biography into more than a career book; they make it a record of what Blume says was happening privately while she was already a successful children’s author in the early 1970s.
John Blume’s response, as Blume recalled it, was unusually measured: "I understand. You know, [when] we got married... you were so young. You had never been with anybody. And don’t think there haven’t been plenty of chances for me… but I haven’t done it, and I don’t expect you to ever again." She also said he was open to her having a career, telling her, "As long as you can still keep up with your responsibilities. You’re responsible for the house and the children. And if you can do this on the side, fine."
John Blume and 1975
Judy Blume and John Blume had two children during the marriage, which ended in 1975. An STD scare led her to tell him about the affairs, and she still refers to him as "very decent."
Blume’s later marriages are part of the record too: she married Thomas Kitchens in 1976, divorced him in 1978, and has been married to George Cooper since 1987. At 88 years old, she is now adding one more blunt chapter to a public life that has already been long documented, but rarely this personally.
Blume at 88
The practical takeaway for readers is simple: the biography does not recast the end of her first marriage as mystery or myth. It shows Blume describing her own motives, her husband’s reaction, and the point at which the private life she was leading finally crossed into the open.
