Elizabeth Edwards Speaks on Rielle Hunter Affair

"None of these (problems) has been easy," she wrote on the political blog Daily Kos. "But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him."

Elizabeth, 59, says her husband, 55, told her about the affair with Rielle Hunter two years ago – months before her breast cancer returned.

"John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March 2007."

She says she wanted to keep it a "private matter" because it would be even more difficult to deal with on a public stage.

But, Elizabeth Edwards adds, "Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private."

Elizabeth Edwards then continued ...

"Admitting one's mistakes is a hard thing for anyone to do, and I am proud of the courage John showed by his honesty in the face of shame. The toll on our family of news helicopters over our house and reporters in our driveway is yet unknown. But now the truth is out, and the repair work that began in 2006 will continue."

"I ask that the public, who expressed concern about the harm John Edwards' conduct has done to us, think also about the real harm that the present voyeurism does and give me and my family the privacy we need at this time."

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