''Not Afraid Anymore'': When Matthew Perry Said He Wanted To Find Love, Have Children

Matthew Perry, the actor best known for playing the role of Chandler Bing in the sitcom 'Friends' died at the age of 54 in Los Angeles. First responders found Mr. Perry unconscious in a hot tub at his house and were unable to revive him.

Notably, the Friends star had a troubled life and battled for years with addiction to painkillers and alcohol and attended rehabilitation clinics on multiple occasions. In his memoir 'Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing,' published last year, Mr Perry described going through detox dozens of times and spending millions of dollars in repeated attempts to get sober. He also opened up about his past relationships and revealed how he feared intimacy and pushed away women who got too close to him.

Ahead of the release, he told People in October 2022, ''That was me afraid. I manifest something that's wrong with them, and then I break up with them. But there can't be something wrong with everyone. I'm the common denominator. I left first because I thought they were going to annihilate me.''

However, he said that he had finally ''gotten over'' his ''fear of love'' after becoming sober in May 2021.

''I'm not run by the fear I used to be run by so everything's kind of different. I'm feeling more confident and I'm not afraid of love anymore, so the next girl I go out with better watch out. The thing that's changed about me is I have no interest in hanging out with somebody that I don't know or somebody that I'm not that into. The next person I really take seriously is somebody that I'm going to be in love with and not be scared by the things that used to scare me,'' he said. 

He also admitted that he was also looking forward to becoming a father. ''I think I'd be great. I really do. I grew up with a lot of little kids around me, and that's probably why, but I can't wait,'' he added. 

Though he never married, he was involved with Hollywood stars like Julia Roberts and 'Mean Girls' actress Lizzy Caplan. 

Notably, he dated Julia Roberts for six months before splitting up in 1996. He said that he broke up with the "beautiful and brilliant" Ms Roberts because of his own struggles with addiction and not feeling "enough" for her. 

"Dating Julia Roberts had been too much for me. I had been constantly certain that she was going to break up with me," Mr Perry wrote. He added that he felt Ms Roberts was "slumming it" by dating him. "Why would she not? I was not enough; I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unlovable. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and brilliant Julia Roberts," Mr Perry added.

 He dated Lizzy Caplan from 2006 to 2012. Mr Perry was also briefly engaged to Molly Hurwitz in 2020, which came to an end after only 6 months.