Former Governor of California is promoting new book, putting it all out there

Sep 26, 2012 07:10 GMT  ·  By
Arnold Schwarzenegger details extra-marital affair in upcoming book, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story”
   Arnold Schwarzenegger details extra-marital affair in upcoming book, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story”

He managed to get through the cheating scandal that ruined his marriage to Maria Shriver without almost a word, but Arnold Schwarzenegger is re-opening that can of worms now, to promote his new book “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story.”

Not only will the book tackle his secret affair with the family’s housekeeper and the 14-year-old boy that resulted from it, but it will also offer an explanation as to why Arnold chose to hide all this from his wife for almost a decade.

Yahoo! sums up some of the reports on the book making the rounds, while also offering some choice quotes from Arnold himself, who sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes, as the video below will also confirm.

In the interview, the only one he’s given since the scandal last year, Schwarzenegger admits that Maria has not yet read the book. With all that, he hopes that she “is wishing me well.”

The former bodybuilder and politician, who is also making a comeback to acting this year, adds that the reason he included the affair and the cheating scandal in a separate chapter in the book, aptly titled “The Secret,” was because he did not want people to believe he was trying to hide something from them.

It would not have been fair to write about his accomplishments and not include his failures as a husband, he goes on to say.

In the book, Arnold explains that he had no idea Maria had known about his affair and secret love child for some time, after she’d confronted the housekeeper.

She casually brought it up during a counseling session, and Arnold had no other option but to own up to it.

He also writes about the reasons that made him keep the secret for so long, including a “compulsion for secrecy” and the obvious refusal to assume responsibility for something he did wrong.

“But instead of doing the right thing, I’d just put the truth in a mental compartment and locked it up where I didn’t deal with it every day,” he says.

Not only did he put the truth in “a mental compartment,” he also made sure his one-time mistress and the child they had lived in the same house as his own family, so as to “control the situation.”

“I blocked out the fact that as a husband and father, as a man with a family and wife, I was letting people down,” Schwarzenegger writes.

He also hints that he is still to lose all hope for a reconciliation with Shriver, though he makes no mention of that in the CBS 60 Minutes interview.

Check out the preview for it below and keep an eye out for it in full: it airs this Sunday.