London - With former partners including Brad Pitt, Chris Martin and Ben Affleck, Gwyneth Paltrow’s romantic life would be the envy of many women.
But she now claims she was not even in love during many of the relationships and that she "feared intimacy".
The 45-year-old said she is finally in an "adult" relationship with her fiance, Brad Falchuk, which "demands a certain level of intimacy and communication" that she hasn’t experienced before and that sometimes leaves her "feeling uncomfortable".
The Oscar-winning actress and colleagues at her lifestyle website, Goop, have written a guidebook to sex in which she admits romance has never been her strong point.
She wrote: "If you look at life like a pie chart … I’ve always felt that I’m a good friend, mother, daughter, sister, boss, co-worker – but that I was most broken in that romantic slice."
Paltrow was married to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin for almost 13 years, and the couple have two children – Apple, 13, and Moses, 11. But they "consciously uncoupled" in 2014 and got divorced.
In an extract from the new book – titled The Sex Issue: Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Sexuality, Seduction and Desire– the actress wrote: "In a lot of … relationships, I wasn’t particularly in love with the person. It was more about 'Why don’t they like me? What’s wrong with me?' I think my desire to over-achieve in part comes from this pattern."
READ: Gwyneth Paltrow says ex-hubby Chris is like her brother
But discussing Falchuk, a TV executive with whom she has been in a relationship for three and a half years, she added: "Now for the first time, I feel I’m in an adult relationship that is sometimes uncomfortable, because he sort of demands a certain level of intimacy and communication that I haven’t been held to before. What came up in the first couple of years of our relationship was how incapable I was in this realm, how I feared intimacy and communications."
Paltrow sparked speculation last week that she had secretly married Falchuk, 47, at their engagement party in Los Angeles. The couple held a star-studded bash, with guests including Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts, Demi Moore, Reese Witherspoon and Liv Tyler.
The party was held at a venue lit up with ‘GP loves BF’ written in giant letters. Paltrow spent the previous weekend at her hen party in Mexico, and posted numerous pictures on Instagram for her four million followers to enjoy.
The actress confirmed her engagement in January, and later shared an image of herself and Falchuk posing on the cover of Goop’s magazine, with the headline In Deep. Before Paltrow’s relationship with Martin, the actress was engaged to Brad Pitt for three years, and also had a three-year relationship with Ben Affleck.