I've Been Unfaithful

According to ABCNews.com, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford admitted that he had been unfaithful to his wife and said that his affair was with a "dear, dear friend from Argentina."

He said that his wife was aware of this affair and that they had been trying to work on the marriage for "about the last five months."  He also said that "what I did was wrong, period, end of story."

Sanford is not the only public figure who has admitted to infidelity.  


After months of denying he had an affair while his wife was battling inoperable cancer, former presidential candidate John Edwards admitted that he did, in fact, have an extramarital affair and lied about it while campaigning for the country's top job. 

"Learning that your partner has betrayed you is one of the most traumatizing experiences someone can face but it has to be particularly devastating to the spouse of a public figure," said relationship expert Brenda Della Casa, author of "Cinderella Was a Liar." "They go through the shock , humiliation and pain every betrayed spouse feels but they suffer on an national scale," she says.

 TAKE OUR POLL: Is an affair acceptable if you're not in love?


Other politicians have been caught in an extramarital affair. 

• In 1987, U.S. Sen. Gary Hart’s presidential campaign was destroyed after photographs surfaced of a woman, not his wife, sitting on his lap during a trip to Bimini on a boat called “Monkey Business.”
• A decade later, U.S. President Bill Clinton was caught in an extramarital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky after the young woman confided to a friend in a taped phone call that she was having a sexual relationship with him.
• In 2006, U.S. Congressman Mark Foley resigned from office after ABC News uncovered sexually explicit instant messages between Foley and a male page. 
• A year later, U.S. Sen. Larry Craig is serving out the remainder of his term in office, despite his guilty plea for disorderly conduct after he was arrested at an airport by undercover officers who had set up a bathroom sex sting.
• New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in March 2008 after it was discovered that he’d been using an Internet prostitution ring for sex.