David Justice is getting frank about the reason for his divorce from Halle Berry nearly three decades ago.
The former Atlanta Braves outfielder and first baseman spoke out on the “All the Smoke” podcast with co-host Matt Barnes and reflected on how he dealt with the attention placed on his personal life.
“She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months,” he remembers. “I don’t know if my heart was really into it. But I didn’t want to make her feel bad and say no. I was just in the moment, it caught me off-guard. We’re getting along, we’re vibing, again, we’re only five months in, we’re still in the honeymoon stage.”
The couple, who were wed from 1993 to 1997, spent a lot of time apart while she was out of the country making movies. “It wasn’t really a lot of negative attention until I decided to leave her in 1996,” he adds.
Months into their marriage, “I’m looking at my mom, I’m a Midwest guy. So in my mind, I’m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, and I’m thinking OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with? And at that time, as a young guy, she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like motherly.”
Eventually, “I realize this isn’t the person I wanted to spend my life with.”
USA TODAY has reached out to Berry’s representative for comment.
Justice thinks the marriage could have been saved, he says.
“Honestly, we probably could have made it, if I knew about therapy,” Justice says. “It’s just that I, because I was young, had only been in honestly one real relationship before her. My knowledge and my understanding and my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast.”
It bothers him that Berry didn’t set the record straight after an abusive, unnamed boyfriend struck her in the head and punctured an eardrum, resulting in hearing loss, something she disclosed to People in 1996.
“She let the world think it was me,” Justice says. “I thought she was dead wrong for that.”
But he acknowledges he could have handled their split better.
“I look back on that situation, and I’m like, that girl really did love me. And I can see why she would be so mad at me. Because imagine if you really love somebody and they tell you they want to break up, and there’s nothing you can say to get them back. That had to have been tough on her.
“I didn’t ease out” of the relationship, he says. “Gone. I could have massaged that better.”
Oscar winner Berry, 58, is in a long-term relationship with Van Hunt. Previously, she was married to Oliver Martinez (2013 to 2016) and Eric Benet (2001 to 2005). She has two kids: Nahla, 17, whose dad is Gabriel Aubry, and son Maceo, 11, with Martinez.
Justice, 59, has been married to wife Rebecca Justice for 24 years, the mother of his two kids.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Halle Berry ex David Justice ended marriage for surprising reason
