Holly Madison has opened up about why she did not publically mourn her ex-partner Hugh Hefner after he passed away in 2017.
The 43-year-old television personality is best known for dating the late Playboy mogul for seven years until they parted ways in 2008.
Hefner had numerous younger girlfriends who were living with him at the infamous Playboy Mansion at any one time. He reportedly had sexual relationships with all of them, and the woman he chose to be his "main girlfriend" would change from time to time.
The Girls Next Door star - who was the former founder's main girlfriend at one point - has now shared that after removing herself from his life years before his death, she did not feel the need to publicly grieve him when he died at age 97.
Speaking to PEOPLE, Madison explained: "When he passed away, everybody expected me to have some big reaction or post about it on social media, and it just felt weird," adding: "I didn’t have any emotional attachment to him anymore in any way."
The former Playboy Playmate - who moved into the notorious residence at the age of 21 back in 2001 - went public about everything she experienced in her relationship with Hefner in her book Down the Rabbit Hole, which was released before his passing.
"I'd already come out talking about what a toxic relationship this was for me," she told the publication. "Why am I supposed to post a memorial on my Instagram?"
As Madison is still healing from the trauma she suffered from a young age, she admitted that she didn’t get any "relief at all" when hearing of the mogul's demise.
"Not relief at all, because I felt like I had taken myself kind of out of that universe pretty solidly. But it was a really odd time," she recalled. "For me, after leaving that relationship, I kind of felt like he had always interacted with me in such a fake way."
"Because every interaction he had with me was all about control or this fantasy he had of a relationship. It almost felt like playing house in a way," she said. "Before he passed away, there had been maybe five or six years where I just had not spoken to him at all. He had become a completely different character in my mind."
Although it has been years since Madison released her tell-all memoir on what went down in the Playboy Mansion, the reality star told the publication that she still gets backlash for speaking out.
This isn't the first time Madison has opened up about her relationship with Hefner as she shared the disturbing reason why he didn't want playmates to wear red lipstick.
She also once described sex with Hefner as "hell", adding: "He wouldn’t move. He would be like a bump on the log in the middle of the bed."
Speaking on the Girls Next Level podcast, Madison admitted that she tried to get all intimate encounters with Hefer over and done with "as quickly as possible".
