Jack Antonoff Praises Ex Lena Dunham's 'Beautiful' Essay About Hysterectomy

Lena Dunham‘s emotional essay about her decision to undergo a total hysterectomy at 31 touched the hearts of many — including her former boyfriend Jack Antonoff.

The music producer and Bleachers frontman took to Twitter to praise his ex’s harrowing account, which appears in the March issue of Vogue and was published online Wednesday.

“Beautiful piece,” he wrote.

After “desperately” trying to manage a “new level of pain” from August to November, Dunham says she finally checked her into the hospital and refused to leave “until they stop this pain or take my uterus.”

Though Antonoff was supportive, Dunham said the situation wasn’t easy on the couple.

“My beautiful partner, who has seen me through so much pain with compassion and care, has to be away for work, and I can feel us growing slowly apart, since life is so determined to display its full complexity right now,” she wrote. “I am surly and distant. I offer nothing.”

“He reminds me again and again that I am still a woman and still alive,” she continued. “But I also know that soon — for so many reasons that have nothing to do with my uterus — we’ll slip away from each other and I will face everything I am losing in impossibly tiny step.”

Reps for Dunham and Antonoff confirmed to PEOPLE in January that the couple had split after over five years together, with a source sharing that the breakup was “amicable.” The two met in 2012 after being set up on a blind date by Antonoff’s sister Rachel and comedian Mike Birbiglia.

Days later, Dunham briefly addressed the breakup during a livestream on Instagram, revealing that she was still wearing a ring that Antonoff had given her.

“I’ll always wear it because love is a really cool, powerful, eternal thing,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be defined the way that we, in Western culture, define it as beginnings and ends.”

“Things can be, ‘You know what, you’re a drop of water, and then you reenter the ocean,’ ” she continued. “Anyway, I really love you all. I’m really thankful for the support. I’m really thankful for the love.”