Drew Barrymore Clarifies That She Does Not 'Hate Sex': 'It Simply Hasn't Been My Priority'

Mar. 15, 2025

Drew Barrymore.Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty

Drew Barrymore attends AOL BUILD Series: Drew Barrymore, “Wildflower” at AOL Studios In New York on December 17, 2015 in New York City.

Drew Barrymoreis providing further context after recently sayingshe can go “years” without sex.

Her remarks last month were on her daytime talk show while discussingAndrew Garfieldbeingcelibate for six monthsto prepare for his role in 2016’sSilence: “I was like, ‘What’s wrong with me that six months doesn’t seem like a very long time?’ I was like, ‘Yeah,so?’ " Barrymore said at the time.

Ina new blog postSunday, she wrote, “I’m sure that there was one point in my life where six months might have seemed extreme, but I’m on the other side of that now,” explaining that she has “very different feelings about intimacy” as an adult now “than I did growing up.”

Barrymore, 47, went on to say she “searched [her] whole life” to understand the difference between sex and love, and had a revelation about it with her therapist, who told her, “Sex is not love! It is the expression of love.”

The mother of two (she and ex-husbandWill Kopelmanshare daughtersOlive, 10, andFrankie, 8) also said in her post that she is “just in a completely different place in my life and maybe in the near future I will get into a relationship … but it simply hasn’t been my priority.”

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For Barrymore, “a relationship with a man has not been top of mind for me for a very long time,” she wrote. Instead, she explained, she “needed to stay very celibate and honoring and in some sort of state of [mourning] of the loss of a nuclear family that I swore I would have for my daughters and to find grace and acceptance and what ournew normal of a blended familywould be.”

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“So for the record, I do not hate sex! I have just finally come to the epiphany that love and sex are simply not the same thing,” theNever Been Kissedactress wrote. “Also, when you grow up and are in a marriage with kids and you think you’ll only be with this one person for the rest of your life and then that doesn’t happen? It rocked me to my core, to put it lightly.”

Barrymore went on to reflect on how “lucky " she feels “to have my cup runneth over in the love department” not only with her daughters, but she is including self-love in that equation “for the first time ever in my life.”

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Barrymore also admitted in her blog post that she wishes she’d “had the chastity and the thoughtfulness that I do about intimacy nowas a 48-year-old woman"when she was younger.

The actress said she’s “so glad” to be at a point in her life now where she can be “selective” and “look at sex as an expression of love and not love itself.”

“But don’t forget I’m a naughty monkey who is rebellious and weird and comedic and wacky and doesn’t judge others and really doesn’t want anyone highly involved in my choices when it comes to this vulnerable subject,” Barrymore said, “butbecause I’ve been an open bookmy whole life [here] we are!”

source: people.com