Jon Gosselin has confirmed he is "slowing things down" from girlfriend Hailey Glassman in an effort to redeem himself and become a better person.
The reality star, 32, began a public dialogue Sunday night with celebrity Rabbi Shmuley Boteach by saying he "doesn't get" why the media is "obsessed" with him.
"Thank you guys for showing up tonight, but please, stop showing up," he told reporters at New York City's West Side Jewish Center.
"I didn't ask for this [fame]," he added. "I hardly ever go out in New York because of it. The paparazzi are everywhere here."
He then discussed his 10-year marriage to estranged wife Kate, revealing why they decided to have eight kids together.
"That's what God wanted us to do," he said.
He said that when Kate became pregnant with the sextuplets, they had the option to abort some of the babies, but they "decided to keep all of them for religious reasons."
After having twins Mady and Cara, "we were praying to God for one more baby, and He gives us six!" Gosselin said. "We weren’t going to be like, 'Thanks God, but we don’t want them.' I wasn’t going to shake my fist at God.
Gosselin then delved back into how he wishes he were never famous. "I don't want this. I never invited any of this," he said. "All of a sudden I saw our marriage deteriorating. We were just trying to fix our marriage, but we couldn't because of the circumstances."
Added Gosselin, "Our marriage started to go downhill in October of last year." The network TLC – which recently filed a breach of contract suit against him – "wanted us to stay married," he said.
"They were talking about branding and marketing, and we were just trying to think about our kids." The show began to cause even more problems in their marriage, he said.
First, "They film conflict but not resolve. When Kate and I fought, we almost always resolved it, but you never saw that. They wanted to make it good cop, bad cop, so Kate was made out to be domineering, and I was just the laid-back one."
The second problem: Rigorous filming.
"We had no break until December of last year," he said. He then accused producers of trying "to create even more drama. They want train wrecks and they do what they have to to get them."
Added Gosselin, "They were promoting our dissolving marriage on TV!"
Still, Gosselin said he attempted to save their marriage.
Off camera, "I tried to get Kate to go to counseling, and she just didn't want anything to do with it. I went alone, because I figured it couldn't hurt, but it obviously isn't effective in the same way when both people aren't there."
By January of this past year, "I knew our marriage was over. If one person is trying, and the other person isn't, you start feeling neglected. And, of course, it’s not going to work."
He added, "I was getting no intimacy, no sensitivity from Kate. I felt emasculated and undesirable." He recalled how on January 17, "My friends called and said they were going out. I said, 'Kate, I'm going out,' and she said, 'No, you’re not,' and then I left."
Jon said, "Half of the stuff that I’ve done, I shouldn’t have done. I chose fame because it made me feel better about myself." "When you’re not getting positive reinforcement at home, you're going to get it somewhere else. I was looking for the affirmation at the clubs and bars that I wasn't getting from Kate at home. I think I was giving love, and it was being reciprocated back to me. I didn't feel respected. She always said I was the ninth child, and I felt like the ninth child."
He said he doesn't want to make "the same mistakes with Hailey [Glassman] that I did with Kate," so they are taking a break. "There has never been like, 'Kids, this your new stepmother,' he said of his relationship with the 22-year old. "But we've decided to slow things down and so for right now we're taking a break."
"The media is calling Hailey a homewrecker," he added. "There are only two homewreckers and their names are mom and dad. We are the ones who filed for divorce."
Before leaving Jon said, "I want to apologize to Kate in private for having public relationships, because if she had done that to me, I would have been pissed. Looking back on it, it seems like a knife in the back. Hailey and I talked about it and we said we never should have gone to France. We had no idea it was going to be like that."
