I was in such a state of mental shock and quickly spiraled into a depression at the multitude of loss. My husband, I thought, was going to leave me. I was cut off from this mentor and someone I cared for very much, David Petraeus, who also did nothing to stand up for me and in fact, empowered his surrogates to throw me under the bus, and that was devastating.

We had to communicate through our lawyers a couple of times over the years, and [David Petraeus] told me that people have been like, "Good job, Dave." Congratulating him. That's the double standard. I've concluded that sharing it won't change anything.

While I fully recognize I had made a mistake in the whole relationship, and I'll call it a human error, I hesitate to call myself a victim because I strongly believe one should take responsibility for their actions.

It's reducing my entire professional career and background to this one word [mistress].

[My kids] were very young at the time and didn't realize what was going on. We told them that mom made a mistake and people want to talk about it in the news so they're outside our house.

You need to accept responsibility for your mistakes. And I've done that.

It's part of the reason I decided to speak out now. This was the tipping point for me. If it's O.K. for [David Petraeus ] to campaign for a job in the administration, then I'm going to campaign to get back out there, too.