Priscilla Presley recounts Elvis's waning intimacy after Lisa Marie's birth in new memoir

Priscilla Presley says Elvis Presley lost interest sexually after the birth of their daughter, Lisa Marie. The couple welcomed their only child in 1968, a little more than a year after exchanging vows in Las Vegas, and Presley has said she fell pregnant on their wedding night. The actress, now 80, says her sex life with the self-styled King of Rock ’n’ Roll deteriorated after Lisa Marie’s birth, a moment she says helped trigger his infidelities. In Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, co-written with Mary Jane Ross, she writes: "Elvis lost interest in me sexually once Lisa was born... he felt no need to explain his relationships with other women. I was to trust him and ignore whatever I might hear." Priscilla has long maintained that she remained a virgin until their wedding night, by which time she was 24 years old, and the couple wed in Las Vegas after a courtship that followed Elvis’s return to the United States.

She also refutes earlier claims that Presley forced her into sex after discovering she was having an affair with her karate instructor, Mike Stone. In the memoir, she writes that Elvis made love to her "forcefully, not forcibly" and that while the act was emotionally hurtful, it was not the reason she left. She adds that his usual tenderness and consideration were absent during that period, and that the memory remains painful. "It was emotionally hurtful, and it left me with an unhappy memory of my last experience of sexual intimacy with Elvis. But it was not the reason I left," she writes.

The couple ultimately divorced in 1973, and Presley would later undertake a 22-year relationship with Brazilian screenwriter Marco Garibaldi, with whom she welcomed son Navarone in 1987. Elvis Presley died in 1977 at Graceland, aged 42, from a cardiac arrest. His ex-wife would endure further tragedy in January 2023 when Lisa Marie, their only child, died at 54 after battling opioid addiction and related health issues. Presley has described her daughter’s death as the second saddest day of her life, after Elvis’s passing, and has spoken openly about the family’s bereavement, including Lisa Marie’s children, Finley and Harper, whom she helped raise with her fourth husband, Michael Lockwood.

In reflecting on the long arc of her life with Elvis and after, Priscilla Presley notes that both the public and private losses shaped her. She writes about the fracture in her marriage, the lives that followed, and the ways in which she has tried to shield Lisa Marie’s children from further pain. Softly, as I Leave You: Life After Elvis is available to purchase from September 23, and it seeks to offer an intimate, if contested, portrait of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most enduring marriages.