LeAnn Rimes doesn’t regret having an affair with Brandi Glanville’s then-husband Eddie Cibrian, who she went on to marry, but would change the way she handled it.
In a tearful interview with E!’s Giuliana Rancic Sunday, Rimes opened up again about her tryst with the actor she met on the set of Lifetime’s Northern Lights.
Rimes was married to chef Dean Sheremet and Cibrian had two sons, Mason, 9, and Jake, 5, with Brandi Glanville at the time. Still, she couldn’t help herself.
“I call it insanity! Absolute insanity,” the singer said of falling for her co-star.
“But nothing ever happened between us except for on camera, you know, during the film … Absolutely nothing. I had no idea what life was throwing me.”
“I had no idea how to handle it … But all I knew was I could not … we couldn’t stop connecting in some way. And it was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through in my life.”
When the affair went public, Rimes didn’t know how to handle that, either.
“I think I became numb. Then I told everyone I should have told and then I curled up in a ball on the couch and then I didn’t move. And I didn’t move for a while.”
“It’s that feeling of your heart falling to the ground.”
“Eddie reacted the way that I reacted too, but in his own way. I allowed him to do that. Because he had so much more to deal with than I did. I can’t even fathom that.”
But Rimes says she doesn’t like to use the word regret.
“I wish I handled it differently because I wish it could’ve been better for me, for Brandi, for Dean, for Eddie and for everyone else,” the country star explained.
“All I wish is that everyone that was hurt, that we hurt, that I hurt, can be happy.”
She also doesn’t like the word home wrecker.
“I’m like, can someone come up with anything like more, I don’t know, original?” she joked.
“Because at the end of the day, I never set and been held by so many … like by my family … my friends, my new friends, this is what life’s about,” she said between tears.
“Through all the hard stuff, there comes beauty on the other side if you just let it happen.”
Rimes and Glanville have feuded regularly over the years; just last week, Brandi accused LeAnn of being a terrible stepmom dealing with an obvious eating disorder.
LeAnn fired back on both accords; Cibrian even weighed in as well.