Arnold Schwarzenegger Calls His Affair with Housekeeper a "Disastrous Situation"

“It’s just one of the disastrous situations I’ve created and the worst thing that I’ve ever done.” That's how former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger described his affair with his former housekeeper during an appearance Monday on ABC's Good Morning America.

Schwarzenegger sat down with ABC's George Stephanopoulos for an in-depth interview to promote his new autobiography, Total Recall. When asked about his affair with Mildred Baena, with whom he fathered a child he kept hidden from his wife, Maria Shriver, for years, Schwarzenegger acknowledged the pain he'd caused.

“It hurt so many people and the mistakes and failures I’ve had in the past, and I write about all of them in the book…But this is the worst because it has affected so many people,” he said.

The affair with Baena happened in 1996, according to Schwarzenegger’s autobiography, when Shriver and their children were away. The following August, Baena gave birth to Joseph, but it wasn’t until the boy was older that Schwarzenegger saw the resemblance to him.

After denying that the child was his, Schwarzenegger finally admitted the indiscretion when confronted by Shriver after he left the governor’s office in January 2011. Shriver filed for divorce in July.

When asked why he didn’t tell his wife about the affair earlier, Schwarzenegger replied, “I was just, I think, too scared about losing everything, too scared about losing her, losing the family and I just didn’t know how.”

Schwarzenegger said writing an autobiography was “painful but necessary.”

“When you look at the whole thing it was just so horrible, what it did to the kids, what it did to my wife, because they are really fantastic,” he said.

And as for a reconciliation with Shriver? “Maybe Maria doesn’t say that, but I’m sure that Maria wishes that we could all be together and I definitely wish that we could all be together,” Schwarzenegger admitted.