Hugh Hefner’s Widow Crystal Hefner Admits She Was Never ‘In Love’ With Him in New Memoir
Hugh Hefner’s widow claims in a new book that she simply wasn’t in love with the Playboy mogul.
When he died at the age of 91, Playboy magnate Hugh Hefner apparently didn’t have everything. According to his widow, Crystal Hefner, he lacked a wife who was “in love” with him. In a new interview with PEOPLE, she explained that while she loved her husband, she didn’t feel “in love” with him. “I realized I was dealing with a really big power imbalance,” she told the outlet for an interview published Thursday, January 18. “It seemed like a world of success and fantasy, but everyone’s having to sleep with an 80-year-old. There’s a price. Everything has a price.”
Crystal, 37, also pulled back the curtain on the iconic Playboy mansion in Los Angeles, and the view was less than impressive. “This place doesn’t really get cleaned that well and there’s mold, and it just felt just kind of run down and gross after a while,” she recalled in the interview. “Too, too many parties. It was worn out.”
Per the outlet, in her memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, Crystal wrote that the birds that lived at the estate were ailing from thirst, and that she felt that reflected what was happening to the women who lived there, too. “I feel like I was constantly crying for everything and everybody there,” she explained to PEOPLE. “All those animals were so depressed and sad looking. It was all an illusion. I don’t even know if I was happy, to be honest.”
Crystal met Hef when she was just 21 years old. Hugh, on the other hand, was elderly at 81. They married in December of 2012, and remained together until his death at the age of 91. Crystal’s expansive memoir is set to hit shelves on January 23, and the title refers to something he once told her. “I want you to continue my legacy going forward…and I want to remind you to only say good things about me,” recalled him saying.