John Stamos Admits He 'Hated' Rebecca Romijn For Years After 'Shattering' Divorce: 'She Was The Devil'

John Stamos really is willing to get real about everything in his upcoming memoir!

If You Would Have Told Me drops October 24, but thanks to People we’ve been getting a little preview this week. We already learned the shocking story of his sexual abuse at the hands of a babysitter when he was just 10 or 11. Devastating stuff.

But now we’re delving into something that’s a different kind of painful — and a whole lot more public. That’s right — the divorce with Rebecca Romijn.

The Full House star met the supermodel in 1994 at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and they hit it off right away. They married four years later. However, something went wrong a few years in, and the couple separated in early 2004. The X-Men actress quickly moved on with Jerry O’Connell — the two went on to marry and have two children. They’re still together nearly 20 years later, and by all accounts they’re the perfect match.

Obviously things worked out for the best as Stamos took those next steps himself and married model Caitlin McHugh in 2018 — and that same year they had a son, John’s first, at 55 years old! But as you might be able to tell by that gap, it took the poor guy a loooong time to get over what happened with Rebecca. He told People:

“My first marriage was shattering to me. I was shattered for way too long, too. I mean, a year, okay, good. But it went on [for] years and years.”

Stamos says those chapters of the book were “really difficult” to write as he had to come to terms with how bitter he was for so long:

“In my mind back then, she was the Devil, and I just hated her. I couldn’t believe how much I hated her, and it ruined my life. Looking back, and I talk about it [in the book], because it’s one of the steps in AA where the fourth step is you lay out all your grievances, everything that people did to you. I go like, ‘None.'”

It took him a long time to recognize he also had “some part” in the breakup.

“You start thinking, it’s like, ‘Oh, she wasn’t the Devil. Maybe I was as much to blame as her.'”

But at the time he could not get over the public perception of their divorce! He recalls:

“It was very public, and that was very painful. I didn’t write much about that, but it’s hard… It was very much the opinion that she dumped me because her career was going great and mine wasn’t, and that’s humiliating. I don’t blame her for it. It was just the perception that people took, and maybe they weren’t wrong. She was doing great at that time and I wasn’t.”

If he wasn’t doing great during their marriage, he really wasn’t afterward, in his haze of hate. He told the outlet:

“That’s when I really started to kind of drink a lot. But without that, I never would’ve known what a real love is, and I would’ve never straightened up to get someone like Caitlin in my life.”

Yeah, that kind of clarity sometimes requires taking a step back — and sometimes it requires taking a step forward. Now that John is in a healthy relationship — and no longer abusing alcohol — we bet it’s a lot easier to see his own part in the marriage problems. He now realizes Rebecca “was trying to make it work because she cared.”

We wonder if this is the first time she’s heard him say that. After all, he admits they have not spoken since the last time they met with their divorce lawyers. Ouch.

[Image via Nikki Nelson/WENN.]