Uzo Aduba 'Was So Sure' She Wouldn't Find Love Until She Met Robert Sweeting: 'He Made Me Feel Safe' (Exclusive)

• Orange is the new black actress Uzo Aduba married director Robert Sweeting in September 2020
• “I never, and still never, doubted that he loved me,” the Emmy winner tells PEOPLE of Sweeting, whom she met at a rooftop bar in New York.
• In her upcoming memoir, Aduba describes her relationship struggles before she met her husband The road is good: How a mother’s strength became a daughter’s purpose

Uzo Aduba compares dating in New York in her 30s to Sex and the city.

“It’s true, you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find yours,” Aduba, 43, tells PEOPLE. “What’s been challenging at times is remembering some of those relationships that were like he wasn’t great and I really thought this guy was the moon. He was the furthest from that.”

The Orange is the new black star describes some of those failed relationships in her new memoir, The road is good: How a mother’s strength became a daughter’s purpose (releases September 24). In the book, Aduba talks about how at one point she texted all but one of the men she dated to tell them “they would hurt me and I didn’t deserve it”.

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“Every woman should do this,” the Emmy winner tells PEOPLE. “We let them get away with murder. I allowed myself to be walked on and bullied to a certain extent. I deserve more respect and it’s okay to insist on it and point it out when it’s not received. I don’t take all the responsibility, but what I was responsible for was cutting it in the bud, and I didn’t. I think a lot of men know when they mistreat women, but they don’t get called out for it.”

Aduba also realizes that she hasn’t always been honest about what she wants in relationships. “I sat down on a first date and the guy would ask me, ‘What are you looking for?’ And I would say, ‘Oh, nothing serious. I just want to hang out,’ which wasn’t true,” she says.

Uzo Aduba and husband Robert Sweeting.

Uzo Aduba/Instagram

The actress thought being honest with a man about what she was looking for would “kind of drive him away,” she says. “I was ready to accept half of what I deserved. I also thought that in enough months I would show him how great I was and then win him over and he would want the same. And that’s a lie. And then I’m surprised he doesn’t want to go any further.”

Aduba admits that she almost gave up looking for love.

“I was so sure it was just not going to happen because it was hard out there on these streets,” says the mom to 10-month-old daughter Adaiba. “I just accepted that it was my story, that I waited too long or didn’t pay enough attention to it because I was focused on my career or all that other me-me stuff.”

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Eventually, Aduba met filmmaker Robert Sweeting at a rooftop bar in midtown Manhattan.

“He made me feel safe,” she says. “I felt safe to be all of myself around him – not the best of me, all of me, my weaknesses, my vulnerabilities, my weak, ugly parts. I felt safe enough to show him. And when he saw that, he still loved me. I never, and still never, doubted that he loved me.”

Uzo Aduba’s husband Robert Sweeting and their daughter Adaiba.

Uzo Aduba/Instagram

The two married in September 2020 in an intimate backyard ceremony at Aduba’s sister’s house so her mom could see them say “I do” following her pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

“At first I was very sad about what the wedding was going to be like,” says Aduba. “But as soon as we started in my sister’s backyard, it was perfect. It was more than enough.”

Now, as a happy family of three, Aduba realizes, “Things happen in their own time as they are meant to.”

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Her full Igbo name, Uzoamaka, means “the road is good” in English, and looking back, she thinks it’s always been that way.

“Nothing about my journey was meant to be easy. It’s meant to be a bit of a chore, but once you get there, it’s such a delicious thing, even more than anything you could have expected,” says Aduba. “And that was the absolute truth here. It doesn’t even matter what those other chapters are [were] because it worked in the end.”

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The road is good: How a mother’s strength became a daughter’s purpose will be published on Tuesday, September 24, by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House, and is available for pre-order now, wherever books are sold.

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Source: HIS Education