US Vice President J.D. Vance has admitted he was ‘obsessed’ with his now wife Usha while still in a long-term relationship with another woman, Mary, according to excerpts from his upcoming memoir Communion: 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 of Vance’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.
His Doubts About Mary
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.
Focus Turns To Usha
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.’
He then recalls what he told a friend about the new fixation. ‘Dude, I think I’m obsessed with this chick in my small group. It’s unhealthy,’ he writes.
Vance heaps praise on Usha in the memoir, describing her as ‘smarter than everyone’ and noting that she had ‘the most amazing posture’. In one of the most revealing lines, he remembers telling friends: ‘I will marry this girl. Or I will be a lifelong bachelor.’
The extract does not make clear exactly when his relationship with Mary ended or whether there was any direct overlap between that relationship and his growing attachment to Usha. That gap in the timeline is what has prompted questions about fidelity, although Vance does not present the episode as a confession of cheating.
From ‘Soulmate’ To Second Lady
What is clear is that Usha became central to Vance’s life. The pair married in 2014, long before his rise to the vice-presidency. They met at Yale Law School and later held both Christian and Hindu wedding ceremonies, reflecting their different religious backgrounds.
Screenshot YouTube
Despite periodic speculation about their marriage, the couple remain together. According to the memoir extract and Vance’s recent public comments, Usha is pregnant with their fourth child. Vance writes that she supports his Catholic faith even though she has not converted, and says they have agreed to raise their children as Christians.
Their political paths have not been identical. Usha was registered as a Democrat until at least 2014. She later shifted her affiliation, voting in the Republican primary in 2022 and confirming that she is now a registered Republican. That evolution broadly mirrors, but does not exactly match, her husband’s own political transformation.
Vance used Mother’s Day to promote both his wife and the book, posting on X that it was ‘a particularly special Mother’s Day in the Vance clan, as Usha is about to become a mom for the fourth time’. He added that they thought it would be ‘fun’ to release an excerpt about the ‘early days’ of their relationship before ending with: ‘To all the moms out there, but especially to Usha: Happy Mother’s Day!’
This is a particularly special mother’s day in the Vance clan, as Usha is about to become a mom for the fourth time. We thought it would be fun to put out a little excerpt from my new book about the early days of our relationship.
To all the moms out there, but especially to…
— JD Vance (@JDVance) May 10, 2026
That promotional push may help sell copies of Communion, but it also ensures the more awkward questions raised by Vance’s own account of Mary and Usha will travel with him into the book’s release.