Marianne Gingrich: Newt "wanted an Open Marriage and I Refused."

In an interview with ABC News, Marianne Gingrich -- Newt's second wife -- says that when the GOP Presidential hopeful told her about his six-year-long affair with Callista Bisek, he asked his wife of 18 years to share him with his mistress.

"I said to him, 'We've been married a long time.' And he said 'Yes, but you want me all to yourself. Callista doesn't care what I do'," Marianne Gingrich told ABC News' Brian Ross in the interview, which is set to air tonight on "Frontline." "He wanted an open marriage and I refused."

"She does not think that her ex-husband has the moral character to serve as president," Ross said on "The View" earlier today. "He has campaigned talking a lot about family values, and the sanctity of a marriage between a man and a woman… and what Marianne says is that is not the way he lived."

In December 2010, Marianne Gingrich told Esquire magazine: "When you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don't like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new ... you lose touch with who you really are. You lose your way."

Allegations of Gingrich's infidelity are nothing new. Marianne met Gingrich while he was still married to his first wife, Jackie, who had been his high school geometry teacher; they started dating when he was 16 and she was 23, and married when he was 19 and she was 26. He divorced her while she was in the hospital recovering from uterine cancer and married Marianne six months later, in August 1981. According to Marianne, he admitted that he had proposed to Callista before asking Marianne for a divorce in 2000, just three months after Marianne was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

But what is new are some of the sordid details about his relationship with Callista, whom he married in 2000 and who is 23 years his junior.

"He used to call [Marianne] at night… and tell her how much he loved her," Ross said on "The View." "And he later admitted that he was in bed next to Callista when he made those phone calls."

"He always called me at night," Marianne confirms in the interview, "and always ended with 'I love you.' Well, she was listening." She said that she was shocked by Gingrich's behavior and the fact that he was sleeping with his mistress "in my bedroom in our apartment in Washington," pointing out that his affair was going on while at the same time that Gingrich was lambasting President Bill Clinton for having an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

"He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected," she told Esquire in 2010.

Gingrich has said during his campaign that he has "no relationship" now with Marianne. When ABC News asked him for a comment about her interview, he sent them an email from his daughters from his first marriage, Kathy Lubbers and Jackie Cushman, subtly discrediting their former stepmother.

"The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved," they wrote. "Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events. We will not say anything negative about our father's ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves."

"He has admitted that he's done things wrong and he's asked the forgiveness of God," Ross pointed out on "The View." But, he added, "Marianne says that he's never asked for her forgiveness."

Allegations of a 13-year-long extramarital affair were enough to force Herman Cain out of the presidential race. But Gingrich has recently picked up endorsements from former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Texas Governor Rick Perry. Do you think Gingrich's ex-wife's accusations will affect his chances of winning the Republican nomination?




Also on Shine:

Herman Cain's 13-year-long affair: Should it matter?
Do political wives hold all the power in their relationships?
What's the most important political issue to you right now?