In January 2011, after seven years of governing California, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s second term was over. He had come into office with no experience, just an abundance of ambition and personality, which, as it would turn out, wasn’t really enough to get things done—especially with a Democratic Senate blocking him every step along the way. He started out tough and adversarial, not understanding that he would need Democrats to see any agenda through. As a result, he made many enemies early in the game and was never able to successfully reach across the aisle. Instead of balancing the budget as he’d promised voters, the deficit rose from $6 billion in 2003 to more than $25 billion by the end of 2010. He did see to landmark climate change legislation, though, and certain infrastructure advancements as well. However, when it came to fully understanding fiscal and budgetary matters, he was in way over his head. Back in 2003, when he first got into office, he was so popular there’d been talk of a constitutional amendment so that, though he had been born in Austria, he could run for President. By the time his second term was over, his approval rating was only 22 percent. His political life was probably over, or at least that was the popular consensus. What people didn’t know, though, was that there was also about to be a real sea change in his personal life.
On Arnold’s second day out of office, the morning of January 4, Maria decided it was finally time to get a complete airing of his relationship with Mildred Baena and the child born of it. She started the new year by setting an appointment with the marriage counselor the two had been seeing of late. Maybe Maria didn’t feel she could get the truth out of Arnold on her own. Arnold had always been so secretive, as Maria knew after thirty years with him. Once, years earlier, he was scheduled to have open-heart surgery and had decided not to tell her about it because, as he put it, “she had a tendency to blow things up into high drama.” He informed his doctor that he was going to tell Maria he was going to go on a one-week vacation to Mexico. Then he would have the surgery and afterward check into a hotel for a week. His physician thought he was out of his mind and urged Arnold to tell his wife what was going on—which he finally did. There were so many stories like this over the course of her marriage, Maria didn’t want to try to have it out with him about Mildred without someone present to referee the exchange and prevent him from just outright lying to her. “We’re here today because Maria wants to know the truth,” the therapist began as the couple sat before her. “Your governess’s thirteen-year-old son, Joseph. Is he yours?” she asked Arnold. “Are you the father?”
With his mind probably racing, Arnold looked as if he didn’t quite know what to say. Finally, he just blurted it out: “Yes, it’s true.” Of course, Maria already knew it was true, as she then explained, and had known it for some time.
“You knew and didn’t tell me you knew?” Arnold asked, trying to turn the tables on her.
“That’s not really the issue,” Maria said, barely able to look at him.
Arnold then filled in some details; he explained that he and Mildred had gotten together back in December 1996 when Maria and the kids were out of town and he was completing Batman and Robin. The two found themselves in the guesthouse one day, and nine months later, Joseph was born.
Mildred—who must have had her reasons—said the baby was her husband’s, and Arnold believed it, or at least he wanted to believe it. He then allowed the growing boy to play with his own children; everyone got along well. However, by the time Joseph was three, Arnold couldn’t ignore the strong resemblance. He then demanded the truth from Mildred, and she gave it to him. He decided not to tell Maria, even when she had her own suspicions, for many reasons. He recalled that the first time Maria asked about Joseph’s paternity, he denied being the boy’s father because he wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to hurt her and “blow up” their marriage. He also admitted having reservations about whether she would keep the secret since, as he put it, “you share everything with your family.” He finally concluded that she was already going through such a difficult time because of her parents’ illnesses; he didn’t want to add to her load. “There are a lot of reasons,” he said. He felt “horrible” about all of it.
“And so you decided to just let her continue living in the house and working for us, all right under my nose?” Maria asked.
“Yes.” He explained that he thought he could “control the situation better” if she was still under their employ. Also, he felt as if it would be punishing Mildred if he let her go. “I fucked up,” he said, all this according to his memory of the therapy session.
Arnold had been a good father, Maria would have to admit, and a strong leader, too, but in terms of being a faithful husband? Obviously, he’d fallen short of the mark. Prior to this therapy session, she’d had time to acknowledge her own complicity in their bad marriage. She’d already owned it. Now she was done with it. Maria said she wanted out of the marriage; she just needed time to figure out “how that will look.”
Arnold didn’t even try to talk her out of it. What could he say? “The truth hurts,” he said pitifully. Maria had to agree.
“I asked myself what had motivated me to be unfaithful, and how I could have failed to tell Maria about Joseph for so many years,” Arnold would later recall. “As I told the therapist, secrecy is part of me. Much as I love and seek company, part of me feels that I am going to ride out life’s big waves by myself.”
Maria Shriver didn’t know exactly how the future would play out for her and Arnold after this therapy session, but she did know one thing for sure: he would definitely be riding out the rest of “life’s big waves” without her at his side.
On January 11, a week after Maria confronted Arnold, her father, Sargent Shriver, died quietly in Bethesda, Maryland. The funeral Mass would be at Our Lady of Mercy, the home parish where Sarge had attended Mass almost every morning. He was buried next to his wife of fifty-six years, Eunice, at St. Francis Xavier Cemetery in Centerville, Massachusetts.
Four months later, in April, Maria and Arnold sat down with their children to tell them that their mother and father needed “a break” in their marriage while offering no details about Arnold’s having fathered a child outside of it. Maria then moved into a nearby hotel.
In May, word got out about the separation; it wasn’t long then before the revelation of Joseph’s paternity was headline news in the Los Angeles Times. The day before the story broke, Arnold was forced to tell his children about the deception. “I asked them for forgiveness,” Arnold later said. “They cried. It tears your heart out.”
As of this writing—2018—Maria and Arnold are still not officially divorced, seven years after Maria’s filing. They haven’t explained why they’ve not moved forward, either, choosing to keep their privacy. Though they don’t live together, the couple seems to have found a way to be friends as they co-parent their children.
Sometimes family dynamics are too complex for outsiders to completely fathom the ebb and flow as people change their opinions of one another while grappling with matters of the heart. According to their intimates, though, credit has to be given to Maria, for she is the one who set the standard as to how she wants her children to treat Arnold. They respect him, just as she and her brothers had always respected Sarge. Apparently, they no longer question his bad choices; they just love him despite them.