Sanford's post was referring to a custody battle between Sanford and his ex-wife. Sanford, fiancée break engagement

The love affair that gave new meaning to the Appalachian Trail has hit the skids.

GOP Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina announced on Friday that he and his Argentine fiancee, Maria Belen Chapur, were calling off their engagement and blamed his ongoing legal battles with his ex-wife for the breakup.


The revelation, which caught the political world off-guard, came some five years after Sanford, then South Carolina’s governor, revealed in a tearful press conference that he and Chapur had been having an affair.

The admission came after Sanford reappeared in public after vanishing for several days in June 2009. One of his aides told inquiring reporters that he was hiking the Appalachian Trail; he was actually in Argentina visiting Chapur.

In a rambling, nearly 2,400-word post on his Facebook page, Sanford blamed a custody battle between him and his ex-wife, Jenny, for creating tensions in his relationship with Chapur.

( Also on POLITICO: Sanford: Ex-wife's new claims 'crazy')

“No relationship can stand forever this tension of being forced to pick between the one you love and your own son or daughter, and for this reason Belen and I have decided to call off the engagement,” Sanford wrote.

He added: “Belen is a remarkably wonderful woman who I have always loved and I will be forever grateful for not only the many years we have known and loved each other, but the last six very tough ones wherein she has encouraged me and silently borne its tribulations with her ever warm and kind spirit.”

Jenny Sanford did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After acknowledging the affair, Sanford also admitted that he’d visited Chapur in her native Argentina at taxpayer expense. He later reimbursed the state for the funding. His political career, which appeared doomed, somehow survived. He finished out his term as governor and in 2013, waged a successful special election campaign for a congressional seat.

( Also on POLITICO: Sanford's lover speaks out on TV)

The Sanfords’ post-marital problems, however, have continued to generate headlines. The couple split in 2009. In 2013, Jenny Sanford sued her ex-husband for allegedly trespassing on her property, a violation of their divorce agreement. The charges were eventually dropped.

Earlier this month, as part of a custody battle over their four children, Jenny Sanford filed court papers asking for the congressman to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. She further suggested that he’d been under the influence of unprescribed prescription medication and excessive alcohol. Mark Sanford denied the allegations, calling them “crazy.”

Mark Sanford announced his split with Chapur three days, he said, before he was to make his latest appearance in court with his ex-wife. There had been few signs publicly of tension between Chapur and Sanford. Earlier this year, the two sat for an extensive interview with The New York Times Magazine.

In his Facebook post, Sanford seemed to suggest that his ex-wife was out for revenge, and that her legal war against him was taking a toll.

He said that he’d been given little custodial access to his children and had been drained financially — dynamics, he said, that made it hard to focus on his relationship with Chapur.

“Maybe there will be another chapter when waters calm with Jenny, but at this point the environment is not conducive to building anything given no one would want to be caught in the middle of what’s now happening,” he wrote.

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