Bono and Ali Hewson have been together for the past 40 years and have four children together.
Bono hasn't left out any part of his life in his memoir which includes the challenges he faced in his marriage. Bono and Ali Hewson have been together for the past 40 years. He writes, "Ali would have been happier with a life that was simpler than the one we've ended up with, and it wasn't long into our marriage that I began to sense she was becoming distant from the life we were living. Though not demanding in any selfish way, Ali had never been "just" my girlfriend, and now she was never going to be "just" my wife," according to PEOPLE.
He added that neither of them knew how valuable this relationship was going to be. "We were up for the ride, but there were air pockets from the beginning, like, say, my immaturity. Married at twenty-two going on eighteen. She was also realizing that there were three other men in her marriage. Men whom she was more than fond of, but men who were taking her man away, not just in his wild imaginings, but physically, all over the world," he writes.
Bono and Ali Hewson got married in 1982. They have four children together: Jordan, 33, Eve, 31, Elijah, 23, and John, 21.
The memoir breaks down his life into chapters and is titled after 40 different U2 songs. The book also includes the formation of U2 with his schoolmates the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. in 1976, his charitable efforts, a 2016 health scare, and the shock of knowing that his cousin Scott Rankin was his stepbrother.
Bono told PEOPLE that his wife was the best person to read the first draft of the memoir. "A shared life gives you a shared memory. Ali will remember things I've half-remembered and remind me of conversations I've almost forgotten. She's been in all the important scenes in my life since I was a teenager and she'll often have a better view of my life than I do. She's my witness. I'm hers. That hurts sometimes," the U2 singer said.
"I was nervous, she's an extremely private person, and I was taken aback when she hardly wanted any changes except spellings," Bono said. "She wrecked my head about some of the spellings," he added.
According to him, the process of writing a memoir is different than writing songs. "When you are writing songs, you can impersonate another musician's approach, even unconsciously, which unfortunately is not an option when writing a memoir," he said. "There's no escape. You're doing it alone, and you have no sound, only language. That was daunting at first. But I really enjoyed the luxury of being able to write long sentences and whole paragraphs. Maybe a little too much looking at the length of the book!"
He added that 40 chapters are like 40 short stories for "people who may only dip in and out." A piece of advice that he will like to give his younger self, "Naïveté is not a negative. A more black-and-white view of the world has its attractions," he said. "The short answer? Don't second guess yourself so much."
References:
https://people.com/music/bono-on-challenges-in-40-year-marriage-with-ali-hewson/
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Pascal Le Segretain
