09/11/2025
How could he screw this up? What would you have done? Addiction was probably his coping mechanism, he never dealt with at the root of his issues⌠if he knew that rebuilding self-worth to feel good and enough wonât take that much timeâŚ.
Getting efficient help was his problemâŚ
HOW ARE YOU?
Do you have to get rid of a similar crap going through your head and heart daily? My dood is open for you.
He had just started to believe in love again when she appearedâJulia Roberts, radiant, brilliant, and far beyond the reach of someone who quietly called himself âbroken.â
In 1995, the world knew Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, the quick-witted, insecure charmer on Friends. But behind the laughter track, Perry was fighting a private warâwith addiction, with loneliness, with the unshakable feeling that he was never enough. So when CBS told him Julia Roberts would only appear on Friends if her storyline was with Chandler, it felt like destiny knocking.
âShe said sheâd do itâif she could be with me,â he wrote years later, still sounding astonished. To him, it was unthinkable that someone like Julia RobertsâAmericaâs sweetheartâwould even notice him. But she did.
He sent her three dozen red roses, the kind only a man with trembling hands and a racing heart would send. His note read: âThe only thing more exciting than the prospect of you doing the show is that I finally have an excuse to send you flowers.â
Her reply? A mountain of bagels and doughnutsâsweet, funny, perfectly her. What began as a flirtation soon became something purer, something real. For three months, they exchanged daily faxes, love letters crackling through the phone lines of the 1990s. âI would race home to read them,â Perry recalled. âIt was like Christmas morning every day.â
When Julia finally appeared in âThe One After the Super Bowl,â their on-screen chemistry wasnât actingâit was a reflection of two hearts that had already met in secret.
But behind Matthewâs jokes was a mind consumed by fear. He adored her, yet he couldnât silence the voice that told him it wouldnât last. âI was certain she would break up with me,â he confessed in his memoir. âWhy wouldnât she? I was not enough; I could never be enough.â
And so, rather than face the pain of losing her, he did the unthinkableâhe let her go. âI broke up with the most beautiful woman in the world,â he said, âbecause I was afraid she would break up with me.â
Years later, Julia Roberts would still speak of him with warmth and compassion, even as Matthew spiraled deeper into addiction. Their story ended quietly, without resentmentâjust a lingering sadness for what might have been.
And in one of lifeâs strange, poetic twists, Matthew Perry passed away on October 28thâJulia Robertsâ birthday.
Their brief love story reads like a Hollywood script written by fate and finished by heartbreak. It reminds us that no matter how bright the lights or how deep the love, we canât fully receive it until we learn to love ourselves first.
As Matthew once wrote, âAddiction is a disease of loneliness.â Perhaps what hurt most wasnât losing Julia Robertsâit was never believing he was worthy of being loved by her in the first place.