Talk about a therapy breakthrough. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not confess fathering a child with his housekeeper until wife Maria Shriver confronted him about it during a therapy session.
The shocking new details comes from Schwarzenegger's autobiography, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, which addresses the collapse of his marriage to Shriver.
"The minute we sat down, the therapist turned to me and said, 'Maria wanted to come here today and to ask about a child — whether you fathered a child with your housekeeper Mildred,'" the actor writes in his book (via ABC News) of their Jan. 4, 2011 couples' counseling session. "I told the therapist, 'It's true.'"
Shriver, 56, waited until Schwarzenegger, 65, ended his term as governor of California to confront him on his infidelity. Schwarzenegger says he started begging Shriver to forgive him, saying he "screwed up." He called her the "perfect wife" and told he was he still "turned on" by her.
The couple announced their separation on May 9, 2011 after 25 years of marriage. On May 17, 2011, Schwarzenegger publicly admitted to fathering a child with housekeeper Mildred Patricia Baena 14 years earlier. In his book, he says he had sex with Baena in 1996 while his family away on vacation and he was filming his role as Mr. Freeze in Batman and Robin.
"Instead of doing the right thing," he writes of learning about his love child, "I'd just put the truth in a mental compartment and locked it up where I didn't deal with it every day."
Shriver filed for divorce on July 1, 2011. But Schwarzenegger says he still has hope they will get back together. "You can call this denial," he writes. "But it's the way my mind works."
