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Jessica Simpson is pulling back the curtain on her highly publicized breakup with Nick Lachey and her relationship with John Mayer in her upcoming “Open Book” memoir.
In excerpts published by People ahead of the Feb. 4 release, the “Do You Know” artist revealed that being in the spotlight caused her marriage with Lachey to crumble.
Simpson, who was 22 years old when she married Lachey in 2002, said they were both trying to find their places in the music industry. They filmed the reality show “Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica” about their union. It ran from 2003 to 2005.
“We worked and we were great at it but when it came time to being alone, we weren’t great at it anymore,” Simpson writes. “We really got crushed by the media and by ourselves. … I couldn’t lie to our fans and I couldn’t give somebody hope that we were this perfect golden couple.”
The actress writes the 98 Degrees member was her first love and that she will always have respect for him.
“He was my first love,” she said. “I respect Nick very much. I was really young and my success hadn’t really begun. He knew me as this young innocent 18-year-old that had never been introduced to the world in so many ways. I went straight from my father to him. Nick’s very smart. He was eight years older than me, but he was also young.”
The pair divorced in 2006, and Lachey married Vanessa Lachey (Minnillo) in 2011. Simpson married NFL pro Eric Johnson in 2014, but before she found love with Johnson, she also dated John Mayer, a romance she details in her book.
Simpson wrote despite her intense connection to Mayer, the famed singer made her feel insecure in their relationship, and she started drinking to control her nerves.
“I constantly worried that I wasn’t smart enough for him. … He was so clever and treated conversation like a friendly competition that he had to win,” she writes in her book. “My anxiety would spike and I would pour another drink. It was the start of me relying on alcohol to mask my nerves.”
Their relationship ended after he detailed their sex life in a 2010 Playboy interview where he referred to her as a “sexual napalm.”
More:Jessica Simpson reveals sexual abuse as a child, alcohol addiction in new memoir, ‘Open Book’
More:Jessica Simpson joins Pink, disables Instagram comments after mom shaming
“I was floored and embarrassed that my grandmother was actually gonna read that,” she said. “A woman and how they are in bed is not something that is ever talked about.”
Simpson’s memoir also reveals she endured sexual abuse as a child.
“It would start with tickling my back and then go into things that were extremely uncomfortable. … I wanted to tell my parents. I was the victim but somehow I felt in the wrong,” she writes.
She writes that she revealed the abuse to her parents when she was 12, while they were in the car.
Simpson also opened up about how trauma from the abuse coupled with stress over her career led her to become dependent on alcohol and drugs.
“I was killing myself with all the drinking and pills,” she writes, adding she’s been sober since Novem 2017 and that therapy helped her heal. “Giving up the alcohol was easy. I was mad at that bottle. At how it allowed me to stay complacent and numb.
Contributing: Hannah Yasharoff
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