‘It’s really good for me to be alone for the first time’

After a number of journeys down the aisle, Pamela Anderson is studying to fly solo.

“Right now it’s really good for me to be alone for the first time,” Anderson, 55, shares in a brand new interview with CBS Sunday Morning forward of the launch of her new memoir, Love Pamela ,and Netflix documentary, Pamela: A Love Story, each of that are out later this month. “People are in and out of my life, or people come into my life, and I thought, the common denominator in all these relationships is me. So, I need to work on that.”

But the former Baywatch bombshell — whose exes embrace Motley Crue rocker Tommy Lee, second husband Kid Rock, poker participant Rick Salomon (whom she wed twice) and bodyguard Dan Hayhurst, whom she wed in 2020 after revealing that she and movie producer and purported fifth husband Jon Peters had been by no means legally married — hasn’t solely dominated out romance.

When requested by CBS’s Jim Axelrod if she’s all achieved falling in love,” Anderson laughs and responds, “Don’t know!”

The interview digs deeps into Anderson’s traumatic youth, which included being raised by an abusive father and sexual assault. The actress now recognizes that her relationship with Lee came from her desire to find security. She hoped she had found that in the rock star, whom she married in 1995 after knowing him just four days.

“Tommy and I fell in love. It felt like this really secure place,” she says. “He would arrive at the home on a horse lined in full knight gear on, [like a] knight in shining armor, and browse a scroll to me. It was simply so hyper-heightened. But it felt good. It felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, that is what it is all about. This is real love.’ It was so romantic, it was so over-the-top.”

But that level wasn’t something that could be maintained, and their relationship crumbled. Anderson and Lee divorced in 1998, so they briefly reconciled a decade later.

“No, it is not a basis for sustainable love. I have not achieved that but!” Anderson laughs. “I have not figured that half out but!”

Ultimately, it was her two sons from her relationship with Lee, Brandon and Dylan, who forced her to hold it together through all the chaos.

“I used to be a mom; that saved me,” she says. “You know, if I wasn’t a mother, I do not suppose I’d have survived.”