In John Lennon’s life, he had two wives and a number of girlfriends. Some of these women have spoken publicly about the difficulties of dating him. He could be physically abusive, demeaning, and inattentive. Lennon himself said he could be a terrible partner. He admitted that one of his high school girlfriends endured a lot when she was dating him.
John Lennon said his high school girlfriend had a difficult time
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When discussing his teenage years, Lennon brought up one of his girlfriends, Barbara. After mentioning the time he had sex with her in a graveyard, he said, rather insultingly, that her time dating him should have prepared her for anything.
“Barbara, where are you now? Fat and ugly? Fifteen kids?” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “Years of hell with me should have made you ready for anything.”
Still, Lennon expressed regret that he didn’t know where Barbara ended up.
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“What’s so sad about the past is it’s passed,” he said. “I wonder who’s kissing her now.”
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One of John Lennon’s girlfriends shared what it was like to date him
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Another one of Lennon’s girlfriends, Thelma Pickles, gave some insight into what Barbara might have dealt with while she was with Lennon.
“He could be very unbearable at times,” she said, per the book John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman. “He was never violent … but he would say things to hurt you. I think it was a defense thing, because he could be vulnerable at times [like] when you talked about his mother.”
Pickles said she never wondered about what could have been with him. Though he ended up being very successful, she never would have married him.
“I’ve never wondered what might have been. It sounds disingenuous, but I wouldn’t like to have been married to John – that would be quite a gargantuan task!” she told The Guardian. “He would’ve been 70 next year and I just cannot imagine a 70-year-old John Lennon. I’d be fearful that the fire would’ve gone out.”
She believed Lennon’s behavior was an act
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Pickles said that much of Lennon’s brash, cruel behavior was an act. She believed he put a wall up after his mother died.
“Then a girl breezed in and said, ‘Hey John, I hear your mother’s dead,’ and I felt absolutely sick,” Pickles said. “He didn’t flinch, he simply replied, ‘Yeah.’ ‘It was a policeman that knocked her down, wasn’t it?’ Again he didn’t react, he just said, ‘That’s right, yeah.’ His mother had been killed two months earlier. I was stunned by his detachment, and impressed that he was brave enough to not break down or show any emotion. Of course, it was all a front.”
She believed he had the ability to be kind when he wasn’t so defensive.
“When we were alone together he was really soft, thoughtful and generous-spirited,” she explained. “Clearly his mother’s death had disturbed him. We both felt that we’d been dealt a raw deal in our family circumstances, which drew us together.”
