Having been through some of the worst possible events in her marriage, Elizabeth Edwards feels a connection to a fellow scorned wife, Sandra Bullock.
'I'm not just a cuckolded wife,' John Edwards' ex tells Matt Lauer. 'I think about Sandra Bullock - who I don't know - what an incredible year she had.'
'She won an Academy Award for an incredible performance, and more than that, took that story and integrated it into her own life in a healthy happy way.'
The Blind Side star secretly adopted baby son Louis back in January, before learning that Jesse James cheated on her and filing to divorce her husband.
Which is part of Elizabeth's problem - you hear more about the latter.
'And yet, the stories you hear are not about all those great successes, but about the failure of her marriage,' Edwards continues. 'That's not who she is... I assume she wants to reclaim who she is in the same way I want to reclaim who I am.'
BLIND SIDED: Elizabeth feels a connection with Sandra.
Elizabeth and John Edwards legally separated in January after he basically savaged their lives; the former North Carolina senator had recently admitted that he'd fathered a baby girl, Quinn, with weird videographer mistress Rielle Hunter.Having seen Rielle Hunter sit-down for an interview on Oprah, Elizabeth tells Lauer: 'I still think this person is so completely unlike me that it's hard to imagine the same person could marry me and be attracted to that woman, as well.'
Of John, whom she will likely divorce next year, she says, 'I think I did marry a marvelous man... he changed over time. He's no longer the person who I married. I still admire an enormous number of things about him.'
'John's conduct through this whole thing was terrible and it makes people want him to pay for it,' Elizabeth says. 'On a personal level, he's paid a lot.'
Fighting metastatic, stage-four breast cancer, with tumors spreading to her legs, spine and skull, she says she can't think about her younger kids (Emma, 12, and Jack, 10) growing up without a mom. 'I don't let my head go that place,' she says.
RIELLE TERRIBLE: John's cheating still shocks Elizabeth ... and us.
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