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Oprah asks the question many people want to know: Why didn't Dina leave? "I was still trying to make sense of all of this. I knew I wasn't going to stay in the marriage. But I had to make sense of it," Dina says. "I also didn't have a place to live. And I had my daughter. I had to kind of ease her out of this situation. And I'm trying to figure out how to do that. How I was going to handle it. What I was going to do. And how I was going to prepare her."
In her book, Dina writes that she shared a bed with Jim for three months after the announcement. "I assumed that he would move out," she says. "Our bedroom was the only one that was close to the nursery. All the other bedrooms were on the opposite side of the house. So I certainly couldn't move out because I had my daughter near me … and he didn't move out."
Although the couple slept in the same bed, Dina says she never thought they could fix their relationship. "No, I couldn't," she says. "I couldn't live a lie."
Looking back, is Dina proud of the way she handled things after the announcement? "I'm proud of the way I handled it for my daughter and for my family. I should have … kicked him out of the bedroom. In retrospect, I should have done that," she says. "But again, I was in a fog. … Here I was the first lady of New Jersey. I had my job. I had my family. I had the awesome responsibilities associated with that role. And I was left with nothing."
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