Arnold Schwarzenegger Refused to Rehash Affair in New Book Since He's 'Already Hurt' His Family Enough

Arnold Schwarzenegger gives endless advice in his new book, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life, but he refrained from touching on lessons learned when it comes to his love life.

In an excerpt from his work — which hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24 — the actor explained that he doesn't discuss his affair within the pages due to the pain his betrayal caused.

"I blew up my family," Schwarzenegger penned. "No failure has ever felt worse than that."

"I won't be rehashing that story here. I've told it before in other places, and other places have told it multiple times," the movie star, 76, continued. "All of you know the story. If you don't, you've heard of Google, and you know how to find it."

"I've hurt my family enough, and it's been a long road to repair those relationships," Schwarzenegger wrote. "I will not turn them into fodder for the gossip machine."

The former bodybuilder then praised ex-wife Maria Shriver, 67, declaring, "to this day, [she] is such a fantastic mother to our children."

The exes divorced in 2011, and shortly after, the former governor of California publicly confessed he fathered a child with housekeeper Mildred "Patty" Baena when he cheated on Shriver in 1997.

"By the end of that year [2011], I had found myself in a place that was both familiar and foreign. I was at the bottom. I'd been here before," he noted in the book. "But this time, I was face down in the mud, in a dark hole, and I had to decide whether it was worth it to clean myself up and start the climb out, or just give up."

Schwarzenegger's tryst resulted in Baena giving brith to their son, Joseph Baena, now 26.

He and Shriver share sons Patrick, 30, and Christopher, 26, as well as daughters Katherine, 33, and Christina, 32.

As he mentioned, the Terminator lead has discussed his cheating past on more than one occasion, most recently doing so in his three-part Netflix documentary, Arnold.

He recalled the moment when his then-wife asked him about Joseph. "I thought my heart stopped," he said. "‘Yes, Maria. Joseph is my son.' She was obviously crushed by that."

"Everyone had to suffer. Maria had to suffer, the kids had to suffer, Joseph, his mother, everyone," he confessed. "I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life."

Nonetheless, the father-of-five insisted that he wants to be a part of Joseph's life.

"It was wrong what I did, but I don’t want Joseph to think he’s not welcome in this world because he is very much welcome and I love him," he shared. "He has turned out to be an extraordinary young man."

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Entertainment Tonight obtained the excerpt of Arnold's book.