Priscilla Presley Revealed How She Fell for Her Dance Teacher While Elvis Treated Her Coldly 

Priscilla Presley began feeling unfulfilled in her relationship with Elvis Presley after she gave birth to their daughter. She felt the passion had left their relationship as he avoided touching her. He also was frequently away filming a movie, and Priscilla knew he had a history of flings with his co-stars. She began taking dance lessons as a distraction but soon found herself falling for her teacher.

Priscilla Presley had an affair during a rough patch in her marriage to Elvis

For months after Priscilla gave birth to her daughter, Elvis hardly touched her. She began to feel unfulfilled.

“I am beginning to doubt my own sexuality as a woman,” she wrote in her diary at the time, per her book Elvis and Me. “My physical and emotional needs were unfulfilled.”

To make matters worse, Elvis “started getting into his old habits” while filming Live a Little, Love a Little. Priscilla decided to take a dance class while he filmed the movie. She was too self-conscious to join group classes, so she signed up for private lessons with the owner, Mark, “an extremely attractive and dynamic man.”

Soon, she found that she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

“Mark was charismatic and I was particularly vulnerable,” she wrote. “In lieu of a passionate marriage, dance was becoming my life; I was obsessed with it, taking all my frustrations and feelings into the studio. I found myself thinking about Mark even when I was home.”

Priscilla felt that Mark understood her, whereas she felt distant from Elvis. Her feelings for him soon turned romantic.

“It had been a while since I spent time with a man who validated my abilities and appreciated spending time with me alone,” she explained. “It was also the first time I was not competing for my own identity. This was a high I had not experienced recently. I had a brief affair and decided to end it.”

Priscilla Presley tried to fix her relationship with Elvis

After Priscilla ended her affair with Mark, she realized she had to take action to save her marriage. 

“I came out of it realizing I needed much more out of my relationship with Elvis,” she wrote. “Elvis and I decided to get away to Hawaii. This was the first time we’d gone on holiday, and I was hoping that it would be a second honeymoon, that my experience with Mark would be forgotten.”

The vacation to be exactly what they needed, even if Priscilla still found herself thinking about Mark.

“We had a great time, and Elvis and I were like two kids again, away from the pressures and the filming — and away from Mark, to whom my attention would occasionally wander.”

Elvis frequently had affairs during his relationship

Part of Priscilla’s frustration with Elvis was his constant infidelity. He stressed the importance of loyalty and trust in relationships, but he began dating Priscilla while in a relationship with someone else. All throughout their relationship, he pursued other women. She explained that she didn’t think Elvis ever could have been loyal to just one person.

“He wasn’t faithful, not that he had someone special, but when you’re in the entertainment business there is always that and I tried to turn my back to that, but I just didn’t want to share him. Simple as that,” she told Sunday Night, per Today. “As much as he wanted to be married and have a family, I don’t know if he was ever cut to be married because I don’t think he could ever be faithful to one woman.”

This was one of the reasons she eventually decided to end their marriage.