Crystal Hefner has discovered a soulmate together with her new boyfriend James Ward.
“With James, my emotions are valued, validated,” she tells PEOPLE. “I’m seen and I’m heard.”
This yr, Crystal launched her best-selling memoir, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, about her life because the girlfriend and widow of Hugh Hefner. She famously left Hugh on the altar earlier than returning to marry the Playboy founder. Their almost five-year marriage ended when he died in 2017 on the age of 91.
She says she’s spent the final seven years therapeutic from the connection, which she says was emotionally abusive.
“I’m nurturing the actual me, my adventurous spirit, my inside baby,” Crystal, 38, tells PEOPLE. “I really feel like I’ve turn out to be the individual I at all times wanted after I was rising up.”
“I really feel accepted and extra myself than ever earlier than,” she provides.
Ward, 41, who owns SeeThrough Sea on Kailua-Kona, has run journey and pictures excursions since relocating to Hawaii in 2013. In accordance with a business website, Ward left Indiana and his company job to pursue his love of journey in Hawaii.
He graduated from the College of Hawaii at Hilo with a enterprise diploma whereas enjoying school soccer and basketball.
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Crystal, whose affirmation comes shortly after posting about their recent trip to the Cook Islands, provides, “I really feel accepted and extra myself than ever.”
The pair have been relationship since being arrange by associates in April, in keeping with Us Weekly.
The Los Angeles-based mannequin and actress, who bought her actual property license in 2008, informed PEOPLE in January that she had been “spending numerous time in Hawaii.”
Added Crystal, who now buys and flips homes, “It’s difficult, inventive and I actually take pleasure in it.”
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On the time, she additionally acknowledged that since Hefner’s demise, “I have been in a pair relationships and so they’ve been fairly onerous.”
“I’m such a homebody, so I’m attempting to get out extra and meet folks,” she continued.
She was additionally hopeful about discovering love.
“I wish to meet someone,” she mentioned. “I wish to get married. I froze eggs, so possibly [I can have] kids someday. We’ll see.”
Talking of her love life now, Crystal tells PEOPLE, “Issues really feel wholesome. I’m so fortunate.”