Elizabeth Edwards: Rielle Hunter Is 'So Completely Unlike Me' Published June 30, 2010
Elizabeth Edwards (left) and Rielle Hunter with the daughter she had with Elizabeth's husband John.
Elizabeth Edwards says she watched her husband's lover, Rielle Hunter, on TV last month and could not figure out how he could fall for someone "so completely unlike me."
Edwards, speaking for the first time about her husband's marriage-ending affair in an interview this morning on the "Today" show, said she could not watch Hunter's appearance on "Oprah" when it first aired last month.
"I didn't watch it then," she said. "And I didn't watch the whole thing. But I did watch some of it. And it's impossible not to."
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"What did you think?" Matt Lauer asked her.
"I still think this person is so completely unlike me that it's hard to imagine the same person could marry me and be attracted to that -- to that woman," she said.
Her attitude toward the former presidential candidate, from whom she is now separated, was a shade more forgiving.
"I think I did marry a marvelous man," she said. "But I think that he changed over time."
After months of defending her husband against allegations that he had an affair and love child with Hunter, a campaign videographer, Elizabeth said she believed John's claim that it was "just a one-night stand" for too long.
"I thought that throughout the campaign," she said. "I thought that for much longer than most people would have thought reasonable. But I believed it."
She says she has found a kindred spirit in Sandra Bullock.
"I think about Sandra Bullock -- who I don't know at all -- what an incredible year she's had. She won the Academy Award for an incredible performance . . . And yet, the stories you hear are not about all those great successes, but about the failure of her marriage," she said.
"I assume she wants to reclaim who she is in the same way I want to reclaim who I am."
