I used sex to cope with divorce, says Howard Stern

Television host Howard Stern has revealed that he turned to sex as an escape when divorce from first wife made him feel like a failure.

Feeling lost after his 2001 divorce from wife Alison Berns, Stern revealed that he turned to sex for comfort before eventually finding love again with second wife Beth Ostrosky.

"My marriage ending blew my mind. I was upset that I failed, let down my family, my kids, my ex-wife; it all was very painful," the New York Daily News quoted him as telling Rolling Stone.

"[Getting a divorce] felt like such a failure," he added.

 "It's so complicated, and it's hard for me even to figure out at this point what went wrong and how things that were so good could go so bad. It's tough. I think I'll spend the rest of my life trying to analyse that."

Though Stern eventually turned to religion to make sense of it all, the shock jock confessed women were his first source of comfort and escape.

"I realised, 'Oh, wow, I can go have sex,'" Stern, 57, said of his newfound bachelorhood.

"I was running around, picking up women."

It was "new" and "exciting," said Stern, who explained he was faithful throughout his relationship with Berns.  But "at some point," he said, "it became just like I was on autopilot."

He went on, "I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't thinking of myself as a human being - didn't value myself."

Stern said he eventually realised sex wasn't what he was looking for. 

"It dawned on me that I really didn't need that much sex," he recalled.

"I just wanted somebody with me every minute."

With that realisation, his sexcapades "suddenly became very childish behaviour," Stern admitted.   

In 2008, he married model Beth Ostrosky, and it's a relationship Stern has been careful to approach with a fresh perspective.

"In many ways, my marriage now is so easy, but I'm also aware that I could f--k things up very easily," Stern said.

"I could start getting more into my work, and ignoring what's important to Beth."

"Part of the reason I got married was that I wanted Beth to understand how important she is and also how equal I feel she is to me," he explained.