Photograph: Bruce Smith/AP
The South Carolina congressman Mark Sanford, a former governor of the state who in 2009 lost that post after a disappearance and revelations of an affair, on Friday wrote and posted a 2,346-word Facebook post about his divorce.
Sanford's marriage came to an end when he was serving as governor but went missing for several days, in order to visit a woman he described as his 'soul mate', in Argentina. According to the post, that relationship has also now broken up.
The Republican won his place in Congress in a May 2013 election, defeating the Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch and completing a remarkable comeback.
In the Facebook post, which prompted an intense reaction on social media, Sanford said he felt obligated to share this information with his constituents because their taxes fund his job. He also wanted to give his side of the story on reports about divorce proceedings, which have in recent weeks included Jenny Sanford's demands that her ex-husband undergo a psychiatric evaluation. 'I cannot do this anymore,' he wrote. 'In all life there comes a point wherein lines must be drawn in the way that we attempt to respond in ways that don't invite more in the way of conflict and add more in the way of modeling Christ's humility in giving in every instance.
'I'll never get that mix right, none of us do, but I believe it's what we are to pursue in all of our responses to the inevitable reality of conflict in our lives.'
Sanford's post includes information about his relationship with María Belén Chapur, the Argentinian woman he visited during those mysterious days in 2009, an absence the governor's aides attempted to cover up by saying he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. That bizarre adventure torpedoed Sanford's previously talked-up chances of ascending to higher office, and resulted in the end of his marriage.
On Facebook, Sanford said the divorce drama had led he and Chapur - whom he also called Belén - to call off their engagement. 'Maybe there will be another chapter when waters calm with Jenny, but at this point the environment is not conducive to building anything given no one would want to be caught in the middle of what's now happening,' Sanford wrote.
'Belén is a remarkably wonderful woman who I have always loved and I will be forever grateful for not only the many years we have known and loved each other, but the last six very tough ones wherein she has encouraged me and silently borne its tribulations with her ever warm and kind spirit.'
Most of the letter, however, is a point-by-point challenge to media depictions of his divorce.
'In simplest form I don't understand how I can be elected by a wide array of folks at home to attempt to represent their interests in Washington, but if the Plaintiff's view was to prevail, be required to take psychiatric and psychological evaluations to be with our youngest son,' wrote Sanford.
'Posing those sorts of questions is destructive plain and simple, and in fairness to my friends in the media if those type questions are raised they will report them - which is why you have been subjected to reading this response and media accounts.'
Just before posting the letter, Sanford filed a motion requesting a gag order against his ex-wife.
'Let's call an ace an ace when someone is playing for the media,' Sanford wrote.
'In fact there is a touch of irony when one reads about the attorney's desire to seal the records 'to protect the children; at the very time when I am getting calls and emails from across the country from friends reading about this matter in their hometown papers.'
An attorney for Jenny Sanford said the Facebook post contradicted the gag order.
'Apparently, he only wants a gag order after he has publicly laid out his position and disparaged my client - what he claimed she would do to him,' attorney Marie-Louise Ramsdale told the Washington Post.
Sanford is running for re-election in November - unopposed.
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