“My kids didn’t see any clips, but they did see some online and my daughter saw some,” Spelling said. “It really overwhelmed her.”
Spelling and McDermott share five children: daughters Stella, 12, Hattie, 8, and sons Liam, 13, Finn, 7, and Beau, 3.
While Spelling said she was “so proud” that her story “lives online” and admitted “that’s not something you’re thinking at the moment,” navigating her relationship to the scandal was difficult.
“My biggest fear in our relationship was that I was. He will merge me, he will merge me, he will merge me,” she said. “So when it happened, I was like, ‘Look, I always thought from day one that he was going to cheat on me,’ and it was not about him, that was about me. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m know I’m not good enough, ‘that’s how I felt about myself and that one day he will realize that and he will find someone else.’
Spelling said that before the affair happened, she used her husband: “I’m so scared you’ll be cheating on me.”
“He [would be] such as: ‘Why are you? I’ve never given you a reason. ‘When it happened, I was like,’ Oh my God, look, you’re cheating on me, ‘so it was a difficult thing to navigate,’ Spelling said.
Choosing to forgive, Spelling said she and McDermott were able to move forward and that she was glad she decided to stay in their marriage.
“I do not bring it up at all, and when I pick it up, he listens and he understands,” Spelling shared. “We had rebirth after that happened.”
“This happened and shook our foundation and we have no choice – we start or start or continue. … It was madness. Everyone out there was, ‘F — him … and I was,’ I love this man and I have children with this man and everyone makes mistakes. ‘”
Spelling asserted that she did not stay because she had to, but because she wanted to.
“I’m an independent woman,” Spelling said. “I make my own money. I may be a mom, but I really like him and I want to work on this. If it doesn’t work, it will not work, but we will try,” Spelling added.
The couple has been married since 2006.
A little over three years after McDermott’s infidelity, Spelling opened in 2016 for PEOPLE about saving her marriage.
“We are not only here yet, but we are united and in solidarity as a couple,” she said.
After McDermott was allowed to cheat on Spelling, “everything crashed,” she said. ‘We had to start over. We had to completely rebuild. ”
Over time, and thanks to intense couple therapy and individual personal healing, “we have made the conscious decision based on our love for each other to punish it and work through it,” Spelling said.
‘It was one of the worst times in our lives, but it was also one of the most beautiful times,’ said the mother of five. ‘I would not change anything, because if we had not started talking and made lines of communication, maybe we would not be here today. “
