Jenny Sanford to Vogue: Husband's Trysts Were 'Punches to the Gut'

Aug. 17, 2009— -- Jenny Sanford, the first lady of South Carolina, has been lauded for her grace, honesty and composure in the face of every political wife's worst nightmare.

Her husband, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford set off a media maelstrom when he admitted in June that he had been secretly visiting his mistress in Argentina instead of hiking the Appalachian Trail, as he had told his family and aides.

Since then, Jenny Sanford, the mother of four sons, has remained dignified and fairly quiet as details of the affair emerged -- through lusty e-mails, online pictures of the other woman, and the governor's tearful explanations.

But in an interview with Vogue magazine, Sanford has gone public with her side of the story.

Sanford said she was shocked when she found evidence of her husband's affair last January "in a stack of papers."

"It never occurred to me that he would do something like that. The person I married was centered on a core of morals. The person who did this is not centered on those morals," she told the magazine.

She called additional revelations of rendezvous with other women "punches to the gut."

Nonetheless, Sanford spoke of her husband in compassionate terms, comparing her husband's behavior to that of someone addicted to a substance.

"Over the course of both pastoral and marriage counseling, it became clear to me that he was just obsessed with going to see this woman. I have learned that these affairs are almost like an addiction to alcohol or pornography. They just can't break away from them," she explained.

Sanford, a devout Christian, described her husband as a person who has sinned, but is not evil.