Bonnie Bartlett Daniels is defending her and husband William Daniels’ extramarital affair at the start of their 72-year marriage.
The 93-year-old actress previously said the couple “never felt bound by fidelity” at the start of their relationship, now saying it was common in the 1950s.
“You have to realize that we still live in a very puritanical nation,” Bonnie told people on Tuesday.
,[When we got married], people were lax about things. The only thing is that it hurts you, does some damage to your self-esteem. It really hurts badly.
“You have to live through that time as an adult to see what it was like. The culture is just different.
He further explained that the pair’s decision to relocate from New York to California was actually the “saving grace” for their marriage.
“Once we went to Hollywood and we were here and living like a normal family and spending weekends at home with our kids and doing things, it was a whole different story,” she said. “Nobody wanted anything more than that.”
The couple have three sons: William Jr., who died 24 hours after he was born, Michael, 59, and Robert, 57.
In his new memoir, “Middle of the Rainbow” The Emmy-winning actress revealed that she and William, who played Mr George Feeney on “Boy Meets World”, had an open marriage after tying the knot in 1951.
While she admitted to having an “affair that lasted a few months” with an actor in 1959, she said that her husband’s romance with another woman in the 70s “devastated” her and changed the dynamics of their marriage. gave.
Despite the pain, the couple was able to reconnect with each other and have never looked back since then.
He further told People, “The first 10 years of marriage could have broken up anytime if either of us had fallen in love, but we never did.”
“He was never a part of it. We both really wanted to be together. Love has never stopped.
In fact, Bartlett Daniels insisted that today the pair are “very happy” and enjoy the little moments they share together in their Hollywood home.
“We sit in this house and we do things. He reads his ‘New York Times’ and he mostly does cameos. And we do conventions and things like that. We just love being with each other. And we would do anything for each other.”