Crystal Hefner Claims Hugh Hefner Was Bad at Sex

Hugh Hefner may have been the man that everyone envied due to his unconventional and public polygamous lifestyle, but his widow says their sex life was anything but exciting. Crystal Hefner, 37, is opening up about the life she shared with a husband 60 years her senior. Her new memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, details meeting Hefner when she was just 21, and their relationship until his death in 2017. Hefner died at his beloved Playboy Mansion when he was 91 of natural causes. Though Hefner was the poster child of sex and a life of no inhibitions, Crystal says he lacked in the bedroom. 

In an exclusive excerpt from the book shared with PEOPLE, Crystal says their sex life was robotic, lacked intimacy, and there was no romance. “This was a well-oiled and well-practiced sequence of events. One that went the same exact way every time,” Crystal writes. “Picking some girls from the party and bringing them up. Changing into the uniform for the job: silk pajamas. The dimming of the lights. The music. The porn. Passing the pot. And then the sex.”

She once thought about giving Hefner advice on how to improve their sex life, but thought it would be a waste of time. “I think when you have so much money and power and so many ‘yes people’ around you, you just stick with your own narrative in your mind,” Crystal notes. “And then everyone else just goes along with it.” She says Hefner didn’t even look at her during sex, and she played the same song every time they did the deed.

“There was nothing sexy about it,” she writes. “It was about power and control and leverage. It was a performance. I was auditioning for a part.”

She wonders if he thought sex was enjoyable for her or his other partners. “He seemed less sex-savvy than some of the teenage boys I’d been with years ago,” she writes. “It was clear to me Hef had never taken a moment in his entire life to figure out how to please someone else.”