Country singer Jason Aldean hated the way his divorce drama played out in public, but he wouldn't change the outcome.
The My Kinda Party star hit headlines in 2012 when pictures of him kissing Brittany Kerr appeared online while he was still married to his high school sweetheart, Jessica Ussery.
He and Jessica tried to make their marriage work after the scandal, but months later he filed for divorce and went public with his romance with Kerr in 2014. The couple wed last year (15).
Aldean prefers to keep his personal life private and it was tough for him when his marriage issues became headline news, especially since he has young daughters.
"For a while, people were really interested in everything because they felt like it was something juicy and a story, and now I feel like there's no story," he tells Rolling Stone. "It's calmed down tremendously. But it's tough not only for me, but for everybody involved... for your family to read things that are not flattering and not always accurate either.
"My kids are old enough to read that stuff and go to school and have kids at school whose parents are yammering about it. On one hand, you try to protect all those people, but on the other hand you don't have a choice but to sit there and take it."
The worst thing for the 39-year-old singer was the fact he felt he couldn't respond to all the rumours and reports that were circulating, because people had already made their minds up about the break-up and his romance with Kerr.
"At this point, people are going to think whatever they think about me," he says. "And I'm not going to spend my time trying to convince them, 'No, I'm not like that.' I know who I am, and the people closest to me do, and a lot of things that have happened over the years have been unfortunate and not planned, but it is what it is.
"Us having to deal with it in public was unfortunate. I'm not going to sit here and say that could I do it over again, would I do everything exactly the same? Probably not. I would change some things and the way I handled some of it. But I'm not going to say I'd change the outcome - because I wouldn't."
