NEWSRielle Hunter on John Edwards: "I Do Know That I Love Him"
March 15 2010, Published 7:51 a.m. ET
John Edward's mistress Rielle Hunter is breaking her silence. The mother opens up for the first time in the April issue of GQ on her love for the senator, how they met, their relationship, and their two-year-old daughter, Quinn. "I feel comfortable talking now, because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity," Rielle says of breaking her silence.
"I didn't feel like I could ever speak until he did that," she continues in the GQ interview. "Because had I spoken, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him. He's very supportive of me talking now.
"It's been four years. It's hard to know that people are out there speaking over and over and over again untruths. Lies. Consciously going out there and spinning the truth. Using me and Johnny and our relationship to make themselves look better, to play victim, or to get money."
Rielle admits she was very intimidated the first time she me secretly with John in his hotel room.
"I had never experienced anything like what was flowing between us," she says. "I sat on the other side of the room. I wouldn't go near him.There was sooo much attraction and sooo much — I want to say love, but it wasn't love at that point it was just this, this magnetic force field like I had never experienced. It terrified me. And, um, I eventually walked over to his side of the room. laughs He was pretty relentless."
Their whirl-wind affair started that first night, with John contacting Rielle the next day.
"We talked on the phone almost every night for four hours. We met on February 21. On February 25 on the phone, from Des Moines, Iowa I fell in love with him. Head over heels in love. I was a goner."
Rielle reveals she knew there were problems between John and his wife Elizabeth Edwards from the very beginning of their affair.
"He doesn't lie to me and well, first of all, infidelity doesn't happen in healthy marriages," she says. "The break in the marriage happens before the infidelity. And that break happened, you know, two and a half decades before I got there. So the home was wrecked already. I was not the Home Wrecker.
She also explains that John would never lie to her because he does not fear her.
"He'll tell me anything and everything. He has no fear that I'm going to abuse him. Most of his mistakes or errors in judgment were because of his fear of the wrath of Elizabeth.... And you know, the wrath of Elizabeth is a mighty wrath"
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Despite Rielle's opinions of Elizabeth as a wife, she says she has complete sympathy for her terminal medical condition.
"Oh, my God, I have such compassion for her," she says. "I really do. I mean, especially when you have terminal cancer. I watched my father die of cancer. It's heart-wrenching to me. But it's also really sad to me, her unwillingness to take responsibility for her part in the marriage.
She admits that John was supportive when he found out the pregnancy news but on some level, "he was hoping for an abortion."
"He was always very gracious about it," Rielle reveals. "And he always said that he would support whatever decision I made...but he wasn't happy about the timing."
Does Rielle see a happy future with John?
"I do know that I love him and that love is till death do us part, and probably beyond, she says. "We have a child together, so at the very least we will be co-parents together."
Rielle felt that love from their first night together.
"He in fact did say to me the first night, "Falling in love with you could really f**k up my plans for becoming president," ' she reveals. "And of course I said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.' "
