Matthew Perry Recalls ‘Incredibly Harsh’ Way Ex Cut Him Off

That’s got to hurt. Matthew Perry spilled his truth in his bombshell memoir, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, including the brutal way he found out one of his former flames had moved on.

Though Perry did not mention his girlfriend-of-six-years, Lizzy Caplan, by name in his tell-all, the Friends alum revealed that he considered proposing to his longtime partner when they were together and was absolutely crushed when she chose to tell him she was engaged to her now-husband, British actor Tom Riley, after the former flames parted ways.

Calling the way the Now You See Me star broke the news to him “incredibly harsh,” Perry revealed she told him in an email after he tried to see her during her stay in London, inviting her to his West End play, “The End of Longing.”

“There was one person who wouldn’t come to the play, even though I begged,” the troubled actor penned. “The woman I’d dated for six years was, by now, dating a British guy, and they were spending half the year in London, the rest in Los Angeles.”

“It was an incredibly harsh way to reveal the news that she was getting married, and not something that I would ever do to a person,” he admitted, “but there you have it.”

Despite the major upset, Perry insisted, “I’m glad she got married and that she’s happy. I want nothing but the best for her, forever.”

The 17 Again actor and the Mean Girls actress met at her 23rd birthday, which Perry had crashed. What started as a casual relationship soon “morphed into love,” as he recalled, and after four years together, Perry planned to get down on one knee.

Perry shared that he was going to include a custom painting of the lovebirds, which he’d commissioned as a Christmas present, into the proposal, but when the time came, he couldn’t get the words out.

“My plan was to give her the painting and then ask the question…well, I never asked it,” he admitted. “I gave her the present and she was really moved by it, saying, ‘Matty, my little heart – what you’re doing to my little heart.'”

“And it was time, all I had to do was say, ‘Honey, I love you. Will you…’ But I didn’t say it. All my fears reared up like a snake,” Perry remembered. “I immediately went into Chandler [expletive] Bing mode. ‘Hey, hey, hey!’ I said to her consternation, ‘look at this!'”

Hello Magazine reported on Perry’s excerpt about his planned proposal.