Arnold Schwarzenegger was forced to tell the truth about his illegitimate love child in a counseling session with his wife Maria Shriver. Arnie thought that Maria had booked the session – held after he left governor’s office in 2011 in California – to help the couple cope with the transition from public to private life. In actual fact, she had far more pressing concerns, which she had been suppressing, all the while that he had been the governor of the state of California.

Schwarzengger makes the shocking admission in his new autobiography, entitled Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story, which is due to hit bookstores on October 1, 2012. The Arnie love-child story is the sub-plot that’s making the headlines, though readers will have to wait until near the end of the 624-page book to get the juicy details of his illicit affair with his housekeeper Mildred Baena. The child was 15 years old before Shriver discovered the truth and Arnie admits that he should have been honest with her long before that fateful counseling session.

“Instead of doing the right thing, I’d just put the truth in a mental compartment and locked it up where I didn’t deal with it every day,” writes Schwarzenegger. He even tried to convince himself that Baena’s son was not his child, though as the boy grew older, it became undeniable that he was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s son. When Baena’s husband left her and Arnie was forced to provide for her and her son financially, he had already been appointed governor of California and so dealt with the situation as privately as possible, so as not to compromise his political position. Maria Shriver filed for divorce in July 2011.