Stern: 'Felt Like Such A Failure' After Marriage Ended

Used sex to cope with divorce

Feeling lost after his 2001 divorce from wife Alison Berns, Howard Stern revealed to Rolling Stone that he turned to sex for comfort before eventually finding love again with second wife Beth Ostrosky, according to a story by Joe Gracely at nydailynews.com.

"My marriage ending blew my mind. I was upset that I failed, let down my family, my kids, my ex-wife; it all was very painful," Stern told the mag in its new issue.

Stern had three daughters with Berns during their more than 20 years of marriage and struggled to explain the separation to their children.

"[Getting a divorce] felt like such a failure," he added. "It's so complicated, and it's hard for me even to figure out at this point what went wrong and how things that were so good could go so bad. It's tough. I think I'll spend the rest of my life trying to analyze that."

Though Stern eventually turned to religion to make sense of it all, the shock jock confessed women were his first source of comfort and escape.

"I realized, 'Oh, wow, I can go have sex,'" Stern, 57, said of his newfound bachelorhood.  "I was running around, picking up women."

It was "new" and "exciting," said Stern, who explained he was faithful throughout his relationship with Berns.  But "at some point," he said, "it became just like I was on autopilot."

He went on, "I didn’t know what I was doing. I wasn't thinking of myself as a human being - didn’t value myself."

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