“She don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like motherly,” the former MLB player recalled thinking at the time

David Justice is speaking out about his split from Halle Berry. During an appearance on Matt Barnes’ All the Smoke podcast on Thursday, Aug. 7, the former MLB player got candid about the issues he and Berry, 58, had in their marriage that eventually led to their 1997 divorce. Justice, 59, shared that he and Berry were still in the “honeymoon state” until about five months after their 1993 wedding, when he began to consider having children with the actress. “My knowledge and my understanding, my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast,” he said. “So, I’m looking at my mom — and I’m a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I’m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, [be] traditional, you know?”

“Then I’m thinking, ‘OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?’ ” Justice continued. “At that time, as a young guy — she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like motherly, and then we start having issues.”

According to the Atlanta Braves alum, the couple didn’t receive a lot of “negative attention until I decided to leave her in 1996.”

“She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months,” Justice said, recounting the early days of their relationship, soon after they met in May 1992. “I said OK, because I couldn’t say no. Who’s going to say no at that time?”

“I don’t know if my heart was really into it, but I didn’t want to make her feel bad and say no, you know, or [if] I was just in the moment,” he added.

Justice — who later married Rebecca Villalobos Justice in 2001 — shared that he and Berry began to have even more differences, including when it came to their careers, before they decided to call it quits.

“We spent a lot of time apart because she was doing movies in this country, that country. And we honestly probably could have made it if I knew about therapy. If we knew about therapy, we probably could have made it,” he said.

“We never had any major issues like that,” the father-of-three added. “It’s just… because I was young and had only been in one real relationship before her.”

Representatives for Berry did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

Berry, who is currently in a relationship with singer-songwriter Van Hunt, has previously spoken out about her dating life — and comments that she “can’t keep a man.”

While appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show in February, Berry said, “I’ve heard people say, ‘Something must be wrong with Halle Berry, she can’t keep a man.’ Who’s to say I want to keep a man? I don’t want to keep the wrong man. Like, I’m not crazy, right? So when you find that you make a mistake — we all make mistakes. We have a right to say, ‘Oh God, this was a mistake. Let me start again.’ We have the right to do that.” In June, Hunt, 55 — who went official with his relationship with Berry in September 2020 — revealed to Today.com that he had popped the question to the star, although she hadn’t quite accepted the ring yet.

“I put out the proposal, and it’s still on hold as you can see,” he told the outlet after having his first joint interview with Berry on the June 4 episode of Today with Jenna & Friends. “It’s just out there floating. You know, maybe you can encourage her.” “I think we will get married just because, out of the people I’ve been married to, this is the person I should have married,” Berry chimed in. “And I feel like I should, we should get married, but it’s not because we feel like we have to. I think it’s something that we would like to do, just because we want that expression.” As for when that would be, she simply replied “soon.” Berry was previously married to Olivier Martinez before the two split in 2015. Prior to her relationship with Martinez, 59, she was married to Justice and singer/actor Eric Benét. She is mom to daughter Nahla, 17, whom she shares with ex Gabriel Aubry, and son Maceo-Robert, 11, whom she shares with Martinez. Leave a Comment