'Unbelievably, Tediously Monastic' Moby Reveals He Hasn't Been on a Date in Over 10 Years 

In 2021, the artist told PEOPLE he may be "done" with dating after his last relationship

NEED TO KNOW

• Moby’s love life has been on hold 
• In an interview with The Times, the musician revealed he hasn’t been on a date in “over 10 years”
• Moby also spoke about his relationship with Natalie Portman, which the actress has previously denied

Moby shares that his love life has been on hold.

After years of struggling with addiction, Moby became sober in 2008 and turned his life around. In a new interview with The Times, the musician, 60, opened up about his monastic lifestyle and how that’s affected his dating life.

"I'm so unbelievably, tediously monastic right now," the singer told the outlet. "I work seven days a week, 365 days a year, because almost nothing brings me more joy than working. I haven’t been on a date in over 10 years."

He continued, "I’m a sober, vegan mediator who stays home and works and goes hiking. That’s about it."

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In 2021, Moby told PEOPLE that he may be “done” with dating. The artist came to that conclusion after his last relationship ended 10 years ago and realized that "no institution has caused more hurt in my life, on my end and on other people’s end, than dating."

"I looked at all of the pain created by my dating life, by other people's dating lives, and then I looked at the other things in my life — creativity, spirituality, activism and health — and I thought, 'Okay, dating, maybe I'm done,'" he continues. "So it's been five years. I haven't been on a date in five years. And the only thing that's disconcerting for me is that it's not disconcerting. I don't miss it."

Moby, born Richard Melville Hall, noted the stark contrast between now and his dating life at the height of his fame in the late ‘90s.

"I was that old country Western cliché, just looking for love in all the wrong places," he says. "Then when you take fame, alcoholism, addiction and a compulsive need to seek validation, it led to a lot of — to be diplomatic — less than ideal dating on my end."

In his first book Porcelain, published in 2016, Moby reflected on his romantic relationships and why they didn’t last.

"I don’t think I was driven by sex," he told The Guardian at the time. "The way I dated was motivated by the desire to be validated in someone’s eyes. And clearly the desire to have sex as well, but it was like seeking validation without attachment or obligation."

Elsewhere in his interview with The Times, Moby spoke of his alleged relationship with Natalie Portman in 1999 when he was 33 and she was 18. 

Moby wrote about their romance in his 2019 memoir Then It Fell Apart, and Portman denied his claims and expressed that they were far from accurate.

“I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school,” Portman told Harper’s Bazaar UK online.

At the time, Moby responded, saying, “I completely respect Natalie’s possible regret in dating me (to be fair, I would probably regret dating me, too). But it doesn’t alter the actual facts of our brief romantic history.”

Now, Moby admits it’s hard for him to “make sense” of Portman’s claim. When mentioned that the different accounts of their relationship seem like a "sour episode between two people who seem decent," he said, "In so far as I’m capable of perspective on that, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying."

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