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According to her new book, marriage to a Beatle was no walk in the park for Pattie Boyd. She was the first wife of George Harrison. And she said their life together, though it had its perks, was a “ludicrous and hateful” one.

Their union helped Boyd in her career as a model, but she found the reality was far from the dream. When things got to a place she could no longer withstand, she left and promptly moved on with Harrison’s adoring best friend. But did her second marriage end any better than her first?

A pre-wedding picture of Beatle George Harrison and his wife, Pattie Boyd, who said their life together was 'ludicrous and hateful.'
George Harrison and Pattie Boyd | Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

Pattie Boyd and George Harrison met on the set of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ before their marriage

In Boyd’s new book, My Life In Pictures, she shares stories from her marriage to Harrison and reproductions of her diary entries from when they met. “George Harrison asked me out today!” she exclaimed after their first encounter (per Telegraph Books).

Harrison asked Boyd to have dinner with him when they met. He also proposed to her for the first time. But she declined both because she was in a relationship with someone else.

However, Boyd was available when the occasion to cross paths with Harrison and the other Beatles came around again on the set of their movie, A Hard Day’s Night. He asked her to dinner a second time, and they married two years later, in 1966, when they were both in their early twenties.

Pattie Boyd said marriage to George Harrison was a ‘ludicrous and hateful life’

Being married to Harrison helped Boyd in her modeling career, but things in her personal life weren’t going so swimmingly. She was still dealing with insecurities from her childhood, and her first husband didn’t seem to help create a stable home for them to share.

According to Boyd, Harrison’s mood swings, cocaine use, and extramarital affairs made marriage to him intolerable. She calls it a “ludicrous and hateful life” in My Life In Pictures, giving insight into why she left the relationship in 1974.

Pattie Boyd left her life with George Harrison and moved on with Eric Clapton

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Within weeks, Boyd was dating Eric Clapton — Harrison’s best friend. He’d pursued her for years, begging her to leave her marriage and even penning “Layla” about her. The lyrics include, “Tried to give you consolation/Your old man had let you down/Like a fool, I fell in love with you/You turned my whole world upside down.”

Boyd and Clapton were married in 1979, but that union headed in a similar direction to her first. Even after professing his undying love for her for years, he, too, fell into unbearable habits, including infidelity and alcoholism. That relationship ended in 1987.

Following the trauma of two unhealthy marriages and divorces, Boyd was left questioning who she was, as she discloses in her book. According to Hello Magazine, she waited 25 years to marry her third husband, which happened in 2015.

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

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