LOS ANGELES — Jesse James says his father's physical and emotional abuse when he was a child led him to cheating on his Oscar-winning wife, Sandra Bullock.
"He beat my ass pretty good a bunch of times...I just remember, like, clinched teeth, strained-neck look on his face," James told ABC News' Nightline in an interview that aired Tuesday night. "My whole childhood, I never had a chance to be a kid. ...I was always scared."
"I was petrified of my dad ... It wasn't so much getting the sh-- beat out of me or getting my arm broken or getting kicked or whatever or punched, it was the in-between time. It was the fear of that happening again," he added.
James said he figured his difficult childhood would eventually lead to the end of his marriage to Bullock anyway.
"I grew up with a huge amount of shame and fear and abandonment on my shoulders from a very young age and I think, you know, the way my mind rationalized [cheating], 'Well, you know, I might as well do whatever I can to like run her off cause she is going to find out what I am anyway and leave me anyway,' " explained the Monster Garage star, whose father, Larry James, denied the abuse claims when reached by ABC News.
"The struggle within myself for the things that I did ...to damage marriage and my life and everything else, it's all me," James added. "I'm doing it because, you know, I've basically never felt good enough for anyone."
After his infidelity made headlines in March, James checked into rehab with a "bit of an ego" but soon discovered the root of his marital problems.
"After about two days I realized, 'Wow, I'm kind of more messed up than most of the people here,' " he recalled. "It was like peeling an onion. Every day it was a new revelation about myself and the things I've been doing. I cried more in rehab in the last 30 days than I have in my whole life. No BS. That's the truth."
James said he received treatment for sex addiction and anger management during his month-long rehab stint.
"I don't think I have a sex addiction where I'm running around trying to have sex with everyone and I can't stop," he said. "I think I do things to sabotage my life, including having extramarital affairs, texting, overworking myself, injuring myself, doing stunts and stupid things. I think I do a lot of things in my life that I shouldn't be doing that aren't conducive to being a perfect husband, you know, and the affairs are just one of them."
He remains optimistic that his relationship with Bullock will remain cordial, even though she filed for divorce in April. The experience, he said, has made him feel like a different man.
"I lived this false self for so long because I, you know, I didn't want anybody to see the real me," said James. "I really wish I didn't have to go through all this and put everybody else through this to get to this place, but hopefully with time and my actions, and the things that I do, I hope people realize that, you know, Hey, I'm human, I make mistakes and I'm sorry for what I did."
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