Matthew Perry, in the role of Chandler Bing on ‘Friends‘ set absolute couple goals with Monica Geller played by Courtney Cox. But in real life, he did not have a partner at the end of his life. A year before his death, in October 2022, Perry got candid about his addiction and how he almost died due to it. In his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing’, Perry revealed that he was heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol and he hoped that “people will relate to it, and how it attacks everybody” regardless of whether you are successful or not.
Apart from addiction, the actor also penned his brushes with romantic relationships which included a serious relationship with Julia Roberts. In the memoir, he stressed that his strings of flings and relationships never led to anything meaningful and long-lasting. Despite dating the most successful and pretty faces, how come he never got married?
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Matthew Perry Had Abandonment Issues
The ‘Three to Tango’ actor had many beautiful, painful, yet memorable encounters with love. The one with which he came out in the open was with Julia Roberts. The actress had a cameo in the hit sitcom ‘Friends’. She played Chandler’s school friend Susie. The two got pretty close to each other.
He met her parents and tagged along for a trip with the family. However, after dating for three months, they parted ways. The reason was his abandonment issues and self-sabotaging behavior. In the memoir, he recalled dating Julia Roberts was too much for him.
He wrote, “I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me. Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, and unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts.”
Another time when his issues crept up was when he was knee-deep into addiction. When he was recovering in a rehabilitation center in Switzerland, he proposed to a woman. However, the actor was intoxicated with hydrocodone. He asked for her family’s blessing, went down, and proposed to her, and she said yes. They remained engaged when Perry was back from Los Angeles.
But, he did not have any recollection of the proposal. “Wait…how did I get engaged? There are dogs living in my house. How did this happen?” he wrote. But, he connected the proposal to his fear of getting abandoned. Perry cited, “I bought her a ring because I was desperate that she would leave me.” The two eventually called off their engagement.
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Perry Always Broke Up With The Women Due To Fear
During the promotional interview for his memoir for GQ, the ‘Birds Of America’ actor cited the reason for breaking up with women. Matthew Perry acknowledged that the mere fear of them breaking up with him was the reason he broke up with his “wonderful exes”.
In the interview, he said, “I break up with them because I’m deathly afraid that they will find out that I’m not enough, that I don’t matter, and that I’m too needy, and they’ll break up with me and that will annihilate me and I’ll have to take drugs and that will kill me. That’s why I break up with these wonderful women that have crossed my path.”
It’s a pity that after achieving sobriety, Perry couldn’t have a complete love story like his character Chandler Bing. The actor died on October 28, 2023, at the age of 54, leaving millions of fans in mourning.
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