US News

EDWARDS TOLD WIFE ‘SLOWLY,’ OF AFFAIR

John Edwards admitted his affair to his wife only in “installments,” according to a new report in People.

“He told the truth slowly” to his wife Elizabeth, one source told the magazine. And that whole truth didn’t come out until after he launched his presidential campaign in December 2006.

“No one should assume that it was easy,” Hargrave McElroy, Elizabeth’s best friend, told People. “There was anguish – excruciating anguish – for her in dealing with this. She was angry and furious and everything but at one point, she had to make a choice: Do I kick him out or do we have a 30-year marriage that can be rebuilt?”

Her incurable breast cancer put time pressure on her decision because she couldn’t think, “Well, maybe we’ll work through this for years or maybe we should separate for two years,” McElroy said.

Elizabeth’s final choice to stay with her husband was based on the reality that her cancer eventually will get the best of her, leaving her children without a mother.

“That was an extraordinary burden for her,” McElroy said.

Elizabeth ended up campaigning for her husband but did so far less than she had when he was John Kerry’s running mate in 2004.

When news of the affair broke, she pushed him to open up about it to the public, which Edwards did when he taped an interview with ABC’s “Nightline” on Aug. 8.

But she was crushed when his interview didn’t lead to relief but instead to more digging into Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter.