The 53-year-old musician claims he often "panics" when he finds himself in a serious relationship, and once ended up beating himself up when a romance he'd been in came to an end.
Writing in his new memoir, Then It Fell Apart, he said: "Whenever I tried to date someone seriously, the panic showed up: sleeplessness, muscle tightness, sweating and galloping, unrelenting thoughts. Before I dropped out of college in 1984, I'd been in relationships for months at a time without problems. But now I usually started panicking after a first date.
"One night, years earlier, after another relationship failed because of panic, my frustration and anger boiled over until I started punching myself in the face. I hit myself once. Then again. Then again, very hard, making myself fall backward onto the floor. For a second it felt good and even justified - I had punched myself in my worthless face. Then I was scared, because I didn't know if I was sane. Sane people generally didn't punch themselves in the face until they fell down."
The 'Porcelain' hitmaker dated Natalie Portman for "a few weeks" in 2001, and while he had enjoyed the short lived romance, he was "relieved" when she told him she had met someone else, because he had been too nervous to tell her he was "damaged".
