The heartbreaking reason he called it stops

Matthew Perry’s tragic death on Saturday coincided with his ex-girlfriend Julia Roberts’ birthday. In his memoirs Friends, lovers and the big scary thinghe recalled his relationship with the iconic actress and the reason he broke up with her.

Perry and Roberts had struck up a friendship before she starred in the second season of the hit sitcom Friends. For her cameo, she insisted that her character would somehow become engaged to Chandler Bing, played by Perry.

The two spoke by fax and sent hundreds of messages daily. Perry praised Roberts’ intelligence and talent, writing, “The way she put sentences together, the way she saw the world, the way she articulated her unique thoughts, it was all so enchanting.”

“So began a three-month courtship with daily faxes. This was pre-internet, pre-cell phones – all our exchanges were by fax. And there were many, hundreds of them,” he recounted.

Perry gushed about his relationship, recalling that “three or four times a day” she would “sit by my fax machine and watch the piece of paper slowly reveal her next shipment.”

“I let her in, figuratively and literally, and she started a relationship,” added the late actor. “We would already be a couple when we started shooting the Friends Super Bowl episode.”

After dating her for six months, Perry broke up with Roberts, who didn’t see it coming.

Revealing the reason behind this, Perry wrote in his memoir: “Dating Julia Roberts was too much for me. I was constantly sure she was going to break up with me. Why not? I wasn’t enough, I could never be enough; I was broken, bent, unloved. So instead of facing the inevitable agony of losing her, I broke up with the beautiful and glamorous Julia Roberts.”