JD Vance Says He Told Friend He Would Be a ‘Lifelong Bachelor’ If He Couldn’t Marry Usha in New Book

Vice President JD Vance knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with his wife, Usha Vance, early on.

In an article published on Sunday, May 10, USA Today shared an exclusive excerpt from the 41-year-old politician’s upcoming memoir, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, in which he recounts his romance with the second lady, 40.

JD said he was “obsessed” with Usha when he met her at Yale Law School, even though he had a girlfriend, Mary, at the time.

“I once described Usha as a combination of every genetic gift a person would want to have – beauty, intelligence, height. But there was something more: She was intense. I was drawn to her unlike I had ever been drawn to anyone,” he penned in the book. “I broke up with Mary, in part because of the long distance, but mostly because I couldn’t imagine settling for anyone else.”

JD confessed he made a bold statement at the time: “‘I will marry this girl,’ I told my friends. ‘Or I will be a lifelong bachelor.'”

“Everyone else was like a dim light bulb set against Usha’s radiance. My feelings for her overrode every instinct and everything I thought I knew about women,” he further wrote. “‘Play hard to get’ was something young men told one another about attracting the opposite sex. But instead, I told Usha before we ever dated that I was in love with her.”

“‘Don’t come on too strong’ was another adage of dating I had learned from the world, but we had been together only a few weeks when I told her I wanted to marry her and would do whatever I needed to do to make that happen,” he recalled.

After they began dating in law school, the couple — who share children Ewan, 8, Vivek, 6, and Mirabel, 4 — graduated in 2013 and married in 2014.

“In hindsight, it’s a wonder I didn’t ruin it. I didn’t just come on too strong; I was a lousy boyfriend in many ways. My traumatic childhood had made me resentful and left me with awful conflict management skills,” JD reflected. “I would overreact or withdraw – fight or flight! – over minor transgressions. If Usha was my soulmate at Yale, I didn’t deserve her. But still she stuck around.”

Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith will be released on June 16.