Jessica Simpson Slept With Nick Lachey Post-Split, Had Emotional Affair With Johnny Knoxville and More ‘Open Book’ Takeaways 

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Jessica Simpson Slept With Nick Lachey Post-Split, Had Emotional Affair With Johnny Knoxville and More 'Open Book' Takeaways 

Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey may have been loved by millions of viewers during their time on Newlyweds, but behind-the-scenes, their relationship was hardly wedded bliss. Simpson, who met Lachey when she was 18 years old, detailed the pair’s romance, reality TV days and divorce in her new memoir, Open Book, which was released on Tuesday, February 4. (The “I Do” singer recently told Us Weekly exclusively that he hasn’t read the book.) “The thing about falling in love with someone in a boyband is that you’re not alone,” she wrote about first meeting the 98 Degrees singer. “There are a lot of girls out there who had already complied all the details on Nick Lachey.” While the twosome briefly split before Lachey proposed in February 2002, they walked down the aisle that October. [jwplayer yvYNArXP-l3ahXupL] “I was 22, and I had just pledged my life and destiny of this man. And I don’t regret it,” Simpson wrote about her wedding night. “Nick was meant to be my husband. No one else was supposed to have my virginity.” The duo starred on MTV’s Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica for three seasons from 2003 to 2005. “I wanted my marriage to look perfect. I didn’t mind if I looked dumb, but I wanted people to see the fairy tale in Nick. In us,” Simpson wrote about the reality series. “I had the Instagram-girlfriend syndrome before it was a thing, and I wanted the world to see my husband in the best light because I was hopelessly in love with him.” It didn’t take long for their marriage to crumble, however. In addition to Simpson’s career blowing up, their age difference and the reality show pressures, the fashion designer admitted she had an emotional affair toward the end of their relationship. Simpson and Lachey called it quits in November 2005 after three years of marriage. For details of Simpson’s other notable relationships — John Mayer, Tony Romo, husband Eric Johnson — head over to Us Weekly’s second Open Book revelations gallery. Or scroll through for the biggest takeaways about Lachey:

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Jessica Simpson Slept With Nick Lachey Post-Split, Had Emotional Affair With Johnny Knoxville and More 'Open Book' Takeaways 

Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey may have been loved by millions of viewers during their time on Newlyweds, but behind-the-scenes, their relationship was hardly wedded bliss. Simpson, who met Lachey when she was 18 years old, detailed the pair’s romance, reality TV days and divorce in her new memoir, Open Book, which was released on Tuesday, February 4. (The “I Do” singer recently told Us Weekly exclusively that he hasn’t read the book.) “The thing about falling in love with someone in a boyband is that you’re not alone,” she wrote about first meeting the 98 Degrees singer. “There are a lot of girls out there who had already complied all the details on Nick Lachey.” While the twosome briefly split before Lachey proposed in February 2002, they walked down the aisle that October. [jwplayer yvYNArXP-l3ahXupL] “I was 22, and I had just pledged my life and destiny of this man. And I don’t regret it,” Simpson wrote about her wedding night. “Nick was meant to be my husband. No one else was supposed to have my virginity.” The duo starred on MTV’s Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica for three seasons from 2003 to 2005. “I wanted my marriage to look perfect. I didn’t mind if I looked dumb, but I wanted people to see the fairy tale in Nick. In us,” Simpson wrote about the reality series. “I had the Instagram-girlfriend syndrome before it was a thing, and I wanted the world to see my husband in the best light because I was hopelessly in love with him.” It didn’t take long for their marriage to crumble, however. In addition to Simpson’s career blowing up, their age difference and the reality show pressures, the fashion designer admitted she had an emotional affair toward the end of their relationship. Simpson and Lachey called it quits in November 2005 after three years of marriage. For details of Simpson’s other notable relationships — John Mayer, Tony Romo, husband Eric Johnson — head over to Us Weekly’s second Open Book revelations gallery. Or scroll through for the biggest takeaways about Lachey:

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Meeting Nick

The twosome met at the Holly Christmas Parade in 1998. “At eighteen, my usual move was to be coy and look away, but I didn’t. He came over, walking in more causal version of the onstage boy-bander saunter I’d come to see him do time and again, but more purposeful,” she wrote. “‘Hi, I’m Nick,’ he said. ‘Hello my life,’ I thought.”

The next time the duo saw each other was at a Teen People party. “He brought his mom, and part of the fairy tale was that he said to her, ‘Mom your mission for tonight is to get me in good with this girl,’” she recalled.

After Lachey got her number — and broke up with the makeup artist he was seeing at the time — Simpson told her mother that she was going to marry him one day. “I immediately felt safe,” she wrote.

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The Virginity Factor

Simpson, who is the daughter of former pastor Joe Simpson, wasted no time telling Lachey that she was saving herself for marriage. “He paused, taking it all in. I thought, ‘Well, Jessica, this dreamboat has sailed,’” she recalled. “‘I respect that,’ he said. ‘Thank you for telling me.’”

While she stayed true to her promise, Simpson wrote that being around Lachey tested her “commitment to virginity.”

“One time, he hugged me, and I thought I was just going to burst into flames,” she explained. “I had to push him away, not because I didn’t trust him, but because I was teetering on the edge of just giving in.”

Simpson wrote that Lachey “stayed patient” and let her decide how their relationship would progress physically. As the pair started to do press together for their duet “Where You Are,” they were asked about Simpson’s virginity at every appearance. “It gave America a storyline to follow,” she wrote. “The sexy virgin and the long-suffering, but still understanding, hot prince. … Nick loved the fact that I was so strong in my faith … [But] I would get so frustrated, asking God to take the blindfold from his eyes and help him find a spiritual center.”

After the pair slept together on their wedding night, Simpson admitted that she felt like she had to give the press answers about her first time because she was so candid about waiting. “I’d built up this anticipation in my mind that the first time I had sex with my husband had to be this transcendent experience where the heavens parted,” she wrote. “What I didn’t know then is that everyone’s first time is awkward, and that is part of it. And that it’s OK, but at the time, it’s tough to understand. I had joined a long line or virgins in my family who said yes to forever for that one experience.”  

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Nick’s Relationship With Joe

According to Jessica, her father was worried about her relationship with Lachey right off the bat because of their seven-year age difference. “I also thought my father might just be jealous because he heard a lot of ‘Well, I asked Nick and he said …’ More and more. I went to Nick with career questions,” she explained.

Jessica revealed that the one thing she and Joe fought over was Lachey and the fact that she was too young to get married: “I never knew if my dad meant that I would be changed emotionally, or it I would be too big a star to be tied down.”

When the twosome did eventually wed in October 2002, Joe even gave Jessica the option not to walk down the aisle moments before she and Lachey exchanged vows.

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First Split

Simpson and Lachey struggled to find time for each other at the beginning of their relationship because of their busy schedules. “My childishness, which seemed so cute and sweet when I was first with him, seems to annoy him. Now, everything I said seems to annoy him,” she wrote. After a lot of prayer — and feeling a “flicker” of sparks with her backup dancer — Simpson broke things off with Lachey.

The duo kept in touch, however, with Lachey often reminding Simpson that their “situation” was hers to deal with because she broke things off. “‘There is one thing in life I want to be, Jessica. … A good man. A good father. I can’t help it that I fell in love with someone seven years younger than me,’” he told her. ‘“I loved us. I don’t have that right now, and it’s something I’m trying to deal with.’”

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Reunited

Simpson and Lachey got back together after the terrorist attacks September 11, 2001. “It felt indecent that God had put this love in my life, and I had the audacity to take it for granted when so many people had just lost who they loved the most,” she wrote.

While Simpson’s dad continued to urge the duo to wait until she was older to get married, Lachey proposed on a boat in Hawaii in February 2002. “I wish I could remember exactly what he said because I know it was beautiful,” she wrote about the proposal.

“My dad was awful through the whole engagement. There’s just no nice way to put it,” Simpson later admitted. “He continually told me I was making a mistake and told Nick to face that I was too young to get married. It was another thing for my parents to fight over, since my mom always took Nick’s side when he would criticize me over some new thing.”

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The Prenup

“As we got closer to the wedding, he casually mentioned that maybe we should talk about getting a prenup. Part of the tabloid mythology of our marriage is my dad played hardball and refused,” Simpson wrote. “No, this was an intimate discussion between a man and his soon-to-be wife. Which is to say that I exploded.”

In the end, Lachey dropped the idea. “They had no inkling that I was going to leave our marriage with much more earnings than him, and more important, we knew our marriage would never end,” she wrote.

Years later, Simpson’s dad and Lachey would end up fighting over money after she filed for divorce in December 2005. According to the “Public Affair” songstress, Lachey wanted a specific number, and Joe refused. “If it sounds crazy that I can’t remember [the amount of money that he wanted], it was crazy to me that we had that kind of money to fight over after just three seasons of a show. We were both blessed by God, but Nick had a better lawyer.”

Much to her dad’s dismay, Simpson paid Lachey what he asked for in their divorce. “I’ll make it back … I promise,” she told Joe. “And then I did. Give or take a billion.”

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Career Pressures

While Lachey may have been more famous than Simpson when they first got together, it didn’t take long for the pop princess to take over the former boybander-turned-solo-artist. “I didn’t want to outshine him, because that just wasn’t what I knew,” she wrote. “He seemed so much older than me, my guide in everything. I want him to feel like he could show me all that he knew — about the business, about the world.”  

Simpson made it clear that Lachey was proud of her success, but claimed her then-husband “wanted somebody who could make him feel like I did when I was 19 years old, fawning all over him.”

She added: “If Nick acknowledged how much I was working, he would see that he wasn’t, and he was too much of a hard worker to face that on.”  

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Enter MTV's Newlyweds

Simpson and Lachey started filming Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica not long after their October 2002 nuptials.

“My dad decided Nick and I were a 21st century version of I Love Lucy, so early on, the producers were positioning [Nick’s brother] Drew [Lachey] and [his wife] Lea as our Fred and Ethel,” Simpson wrote about filming Newlyweds season 1. “They were there on behalf of our viewers, rolling their eyes at something I said.”

Newlyweds viewers may remember the couple fighting over Simpson’s spending habits, lack of cooking skills and decorating the house, but the pair never wanted to get too real with the cameras. “Talking about our sex life was a classic way to get the crew distracted from some issue,” she explained. “That was always something they seemed to react to and would use to lighten up the plot.”

According to Simpson, all of the ditzy moments — Chicken of the Sea, “plata-ma-pus” and even her believing buffalo wings were made out of buffalos — were all real. “My airhead moments became known as ‘pulling a Jessica,’” she recalled. “I didn’t care if people made fun of me, because we were pulling in nearly three million viewers a week.”

Simpson gave behind-the-scenes details of a season 2 episode of Newlyweds, in which the twosome were in Atlantic City on their wedding anniversary. “I wanted people to believe he was everyone’s vision of a leading man. The problem is, Nick could hit marks, but he couldn’t improv any lines,” she wrote, citing Lachey not being able to remember their first dance song during a romantic celebration that she believes MTV planned for the pair. “We had became actors in our own lives, playing ourselves. Worse, we slowly started acting out our parts even when cameras weren’t rolling.”

By the time season 3 came around, Simpson wrote that she was “sick of lying” for the cameras, but the twosome had already signed a deal to continue the show. More and more, the duo would telling the crew to “stop rolling” — their safe phrase — and there was barely any footage left to make a show. “They had to do a clip show for the last one, where we pretended we wanted to move out of the house but changed our minds,” she recalled. “It was bizarre, and I never watched it. We finished our the run and fulfilled the contract.”

Newlyweds final episode aired in March 2005.

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Accusing Nick of Cheating

“I would accuse him of having a wandering eyes, and he would rip into me, making sure I knew I was the one causing the problems in our marriage,” Simpson wrote, referring to the situation as a cycle. “There was something Nick wanted from me that I no longer had, an emptiness I couldn’t fill, and neither could he. … We were not one of those couples that screamed at each other, let whatever fly out of our mouths, and then make mad, passionate love. No, we would yell at each other, and then he would go out with his boys and not answer the phone.”

Simpson admitted that she would try to be sexy for Lachey because he liked strip clubs and the VIP treatment at bars. Newlyweds fans may recall Simpson jumping out of a cake on Lachey’s 30th birthday during season 2: “‘If I dress like those women,’ I thought, ‘maybe you’ll look at me,’” she wrote.

Simpson also described an incident in which a Newlyweds production assistant showed her a tabloid story about Lachey at a strip club on a bachelor party. “The tabloid said Nick did some vague thing with a porn star named Jessica. I stopped reading,” she recalled. “‘Why are you showing me this?’ I asked. The production assistant looked embarrassed. I realized they wanted a reaction on camera. If we can’t get them to interact romantically, let’s have them fight.”

Simpson concluded that she never knew what to believe when stories about Lachey in strip clubs surfaced. “Did he feel caught in this marriage? He kept putting himself into situations where he could be so easily accused of cheating,” she wrote.  

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Emotional Affair With Johnny Knoxville

While Simpson may have questioned if Lachey ever strayed, she admitted to having a full-on emotional affair with her Dukes of Hazzard costar Johnny Knoxville. “I felt a force drawing us together,” she wrote about Knoxville, who was married to his first wife, Melanie Lynn Clapp, at the time. “To me, an emotional affair was worse than a physical one. It’s funny, I know, because I had placed such an emphasis on sex by not having it before marriage. After I actually had sex, I understood that the emotional part was what mattered. And Johnny and I had that.”

According to Simpson, she and Knoxville, who denied having an affair with his costar at the time, spoke about the challenges of their respective marriages. Lachey eventually visited Simpson on set in Baton Rogue, Louisiana, because he was suspicious.

“We wrote these flowery love letters back and forth, often at night with Nick passed out in the bed next to me,” she wrote about Knoxville. “We talked about music, and I would listen to Johnny Cash songs he suggested just to feel like we were still together. … It’s like Johnny and I were prison pen pals, two people who wanted too much to be with each other but were kept apart — by bars, by our stars, by our respective spouses.”

After she left Lachey in 2005, however, she concluded that she needed to give up the Jackass star. “I hadn’t left Nick for anybody but me, so I didn’t have the illusion that I could turn to Johnny and say, ‘OK, now your turn.’ He needed time, and I didn’t have time,” she wrote. “In one of his texts, he asked me how I [left my marriage.] … ’You just have to do it.’ I said. He didn’t, at least not for another year. But by then, it was too late for us. I finally let the idea of him go.”

Knoxville split from Clapp in 2008, three years after Dukes of Hazzard hit theaters. He married Naomi Nelson in 2010.

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The Divorce

While Simpson and Lachey went to marriage counseling once, she claimed he never showed up to their second session and subsequently stopped coming at all. Simpson also revealed that the twosome partied — separately — a lot at the end of their marriage. After one night out, according to Simpson, Lachey drunkenly told her that her friends and parents are only there for her because they are on her payroll. “The next day, I would tell him what he said. He wouldn’t remember. But I would,” she wrote.

Simpson told Lachey she wanted a divorce two days before Thanksgiving in 2005. According to the “Sweetest Sin” songstress, the former couple were barely speaking to each other at the time. While Lachey tried to convince Simpson not to call it quits, she didn’t budge and retreated to her grandparents’ house in Texas.

Even the singer’s mother, Tina, tried to convince her daughter that she shouldn’t leave Lachey, telling Jessica that they were “America’s couple.” In the end, she stuck to her gut and moved her stuff out of the house while Lachey was out of town.

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Nick Didn’t Want to Let Go

According to Simpson, Lachey had a much harder time accepting their split than she did. “Divorce is messy. I know he came home [after I moved my stuff out] and was furious. Nick felt like he’d been robbed, and I know he told someone, ‘She even took my damn dog,’” she wrote. “I wish we were the kind of people who could divorce and stay friends. We weren’t, and I regret that my actions hurt him.”

When she filed for divorce in December 2005, Lachey told her that their marriage wasn’t over for him. He even showed up at her parents’ house, insisting he could change and begging her to take him back, according to Simpson. “‘Please don’t leave me. ... I love you so much,’ he said. 'Love is not enough,’ I said. ‘If love was enough, I would stay forever. But it isn’t enough. We have to like each other. We have to be friends.'"

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What’s Left of Nick

At the end of their marriage, Simpson noticed that Lachey invited some of their Newlyweds producers back into their lives to follow his journey as he wrote his second album. The footage would ultimately he used for an MTV documentary, which Simpson watched months after their breakup.

“I just wanted to know what he was going to reveal, and I also wanted to know what he thought of me now, because at that point I had no idea,” she wrote. “Well, I soon learned that he hated me. … I watched him portray himself as a victim, casting me as this selfish person. He then mentioned that the door was still open for us to get back together. I kept pulling the blanket up over my face to hide … I felt so exposed.”

Simpson went on to watch the Making the Video special for his single “What’s Left of Me,” which featured Lachey’s now-wife, Vanessa Lachey (née Minnillo). “[He] recreated our life for the video, casting his future wife Vanessa Minnillo to play me as this cold, unfeeling person. I knew he did this to hurt me,” she wrote. “It didn’t make me cry, it made me mad.”

While Simpson opted for an upbeat album celebrating her newfound freedom (2006’s A Public Affair), she accused Lachey of using her for PR for his album What’s Left of Me.  

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Post-Split Hookup

Even though Simpson was pissed at Lachey for the “What’s Left of Me” video, she wrote that she felt “responsible” for his unhappiness and felt like she “needed to fix him.” As a result, she called her ex and he came over.

“He rang the bell, and out of reflex I hugged him. I meant it, too. Despite my anger, I missed him,” she wrote. After listening to his new album with him, Simpson, who said she felt “numb” hearing Lachey sing such negative things about her, had sex with him.

“I didn’t know any other way to make it better, so I slept with him,” she admitted. “I could feel his hate. The whole situation was very dark. I didn’t want the energy in my home. When he walked out the door, I knew I would never see him again.”

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The Final Run-In

Simpson and Lachey nearly ran into each other at a Mexican restaurant when he was with Vanessa and she was with now-husband Eric in 2010. After her mother made it clear that her ex-husband spotted her, Simpson got up to try and find him in the dark restaurant. “My heart started going into overdrive, and I began drinking heavily, thinking it would help everybody loosen up,” she recalled. While she scanned the restaurant for Nick and Vanessa, who wed in 2011, she claimed she couldn’t see them — even though she was “right” next to their table, according to Tina. “I started crying, so Eric and I left. My mom went to them to try and smooth things over,” she wrote.

“'It was probably for the better,’ [Nick] said [to Tina]. He might have been annoyed, but he was graceful to my mom, and I appreciate that,” Jessica wrote. “I still don’t know why I didn’t see him. Maybe God put blinders on me so I wouldn’t be tempted to look back and just keep moving forward.”