Jessica Simpson Reveals In New Memoir That John Mayer Said He Was Obsessed With Her
In her upcoming memoir Open Book of Her, Jessica Simpson writes candidly about what she learned about herself in her relationships, including her romance with musician John Mayer.
Video: Jessica Simpson Reveals In New Memoir That John Mayer Said He Was Obsessed With Her
They met in early 2005 at a Grammy party hosted by Clive Davis. The guitarist told her how much he admired a song she wrote called "With You" and she was flattered when he started writing to her.
The notes quickly became more intimate, and after she divorced Nick Lachey in late 2005, she began dating other men. But as she writes, Mayer told her that she "wanted to have me all or nothing."
“He would walk into a room and take his guitar and you would pass out,” Simpson, 39, tells People. “I didn't really know the man behind the guitar. And that was my mission."
They secretly dated for several months and she fell in love with the intensity of him. "Over and over, he told me that he was obsessed with me, se**ually and emotionally," she writes.
While Mayer made her feel physically powerful, she also felt insecure around him, feeling that she always had to win him over after one of her many breakups.
Though she prided herself on not being the ditzy blonde she was often portrayed to be (Simpson was always in on the joke), she began to doubt herself.
"I constantly worried that she wasn't smart enough for him," she writes. "He was so smart and treated the conversation like a friendly competition that he had to win."
She was so afraid of disappointing him that she would sometimes ask a friend to proofread her texts to see if the grammar and spelling were correct. And when she felt unsure of herself, she writes: “My anxiety increased and she poured me another drink. It was the beginning of my dependence on alcohol to mask my nerves."
Enlarge image Jessica Simpson on the cover of PEOPLE | Credit: Mike Rosenthal
In her powerful memoir, Simpson reveals her own history of anxiety and emotional pain, much of which stems from the se**ual abuse she survived as a child. Pain that she often numbs herself with alcohol and stimulants.
She has been sober since November 2017, a journey she explores in her book, she now has more clarity and understanding of her past.
“He loved me in the way that he could and I loved that love for a long time,” she says of Mayer, now 42. "Too much time. And I was going back and forth with him for a long time. But he did control me."
Her contact ended after he called her "se**ual napalm" in a Playboy interview in 2010. "He thought that's what he wanted me to be called," she says. "I was floored and embarrassed that my grandmother was actually going to read that."
"A woman and how they are in bed is never something you talk about," adds Simpson. "It was shocking."
The hardest part was knowing that Mayer had broken her trust. "He was the most loyal person on the planet and when I read that he wasn't, that was it for me," she says. “I deleted his number. He made it easy for me."
Although they are no longer in contact, she says, "I know he has publicly apologized and I don't want to take it away from him."
"I think he already knows a lot of this about me, but he doesn't know my perspective as a woman," she says. "That was Jess in her 20s."
Now the director of a billion-dollar clothing line, the Jessica Simpson Collection, the star found love and happiness when she met her soulmate Eric Johnson through a mutual friend in 2010. They married in 2014 and They have three children together: daughter Maxwell, 7, son Ace, 6, and daughter Birdie, 10 months.
"I've never had that kind of connection before," she says of her husband. "He is a very selfless and caring person."
In recent years, she has started writing music again, new songs that she will release along with the audiobook that she narrated.
Simpson hopes that both her words and her music will help other people who have been through hardships.
“I have never felt more inspired,” she says. "There is power in truth."
For more from Jessica Simpson and an exclusive excerpt from Open Book, check out the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
