Jenny Sanford on Scandal and 'Staying True'

(Feb. 8) -- Raising kids is tough enough, but Jenny Sanford says it's even harder to rear four sons when your estranged husband is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, whose story about a trip to the Appalachian Trail last summer unraveled a web of lies -- and sparked a media frenzy -- over his infidelity.

"It makes raising them to be great men and men of character more difficult because there's a lot that they have to digest," Jenny Sanford said today on ABC's "Good Morning America." "These are weighty subjects to have to discuss with your children."

It was a story so big and so scandalous, Sanford said that even her kids Googled her husband's Argentine mistress, Maria Belen Chapur, prompting a difficult conversation about their dad's value system.

"My hope is in the long run they'll be better men for it, better husbands and fathers," Mrs. Sanford told ABC's George Stephanopoulous about her boys, ages 11 to 17.

Unlike Silda Wall Spitzer and Dina Matos McGreevey before her, Mrs. Sanford refused to stand by her man as he admitted his extramarital affair in an awkward news conference. But like Elizabeth Edwards (and Matos McGreevey), Sanford has turned her spurned political wife's tale into a much-talked-about book, "Staying True," which went on sale Friday.

The account is aptly titled, as Sanford writes that she tried to preserve her 20-year marriage after finding a love letter from the woman her husband called his "soul mate" in January 2009.

"My first gut instinct was to forgive him, not to kick him out," Sanford said on "20/20" Friday, her first TV interview since the scandal broke. "I told him immediately that I wanted to reconcile, that I would forgive him, but that it had to be over, and the marriage had to be much better. I wasn't going to go back to more of the same."

But Gov. Sanford was too far entangled in what he called a "forbidden love story" with Chapur, even visiting her against his wife's wishes. Almost a year after finding the love letter, Jenny Sanford filed for divorce in December, a few months after she and her children moved from the governor's mansion to the family beach house outside Charleston.

"It was a long time coming," Sanford said on "GMA," adding that she "felt very trapped because of the house we lived in and the job my husband had ... I couldn't kick him out of the house because it was the government's house."

Sanford dismissed a question about whether she thinks her husband will continue a romantic relationship with Chapur.

"That's about the least of my concerns right now," she said. "I really don't care to know who he's talking to on his personal side."

Though far from sordid, "Staying True" reveals a Mark Sanford who was overly frugal -- he once forced his wife to return a diamond necklace he gave her after he decided it wasn't worth the money -- and long averse to remaining faithful, considering he struck any mention of "fidelity" from his wedding vows.

Jenny Sanford's book temporarily returns her family ordeal to the spotlight, but she said she does not believe the book will further damage her four sons.

"They've read junk about their dad for years -- the good, the bad and the ugly," she told "GMA." "That's what a life in the public eye is."