Ain’t every country ballad pretty, and LeAnn Rimes knows her verse is messy as hell.

Back in 2009, the Blue singer with the platinum pipes became the tabloid villain nobody asked for when she and actor Eddie Cibrian turned a made-for-TV movie into a real-life soap opera. Both were married. Both got caught. And the fallout was like tossing gasoline on a brush fire already burning hot in the gossip pages. Folks didn’t just read about it; they devoured every scandalous detail like it was the last piece of pie at the church potluck.

When the story broke, the grainy restaurant photos and the secret getaways, Rimes went from America’s sweetheart to country’s favorite cautionary tale. Brandi Glanville, Cibrian’s then-wife and Real Housewives pot-stirrer, didn’t just spill the tea; she threw the whole kettle. Meanwhile, LeAnn’s then-husband, chef Dean Sheremet, packed his knives and walked. The headlines wrote themselves, and so did the public’s rage. But here’s the part they didn’t write: what it feels like to be the bullseye on the world’s dartboard for damn near a decade.

In her new Flow Space interview, LeAnn doesn’t dodge the fire. She calls it what it was. Selfish. She owned it then, and she owns it now. “I did one of the most selfish things I could do, in hurting someone else,” she told ABC back when the wounds were fresh. But she made it clear she didn’t regret where she landed, married to the man she blew up her life for.

That line alone made a whole generation of women ready to pull her hair out by the roots, not because they cared about Eddie Cibrian’s six-pack abs but because they knew that sting. Cheating stories hit a raw nerve in a way only country fans can appreciate. Hell, half of Nashville’s best songs were born from somebody sneaking out the back door. But when the singer is the one doing the sneaking, folks sharpen their knives quick. LeAnn says she felt every bit of that too: “I was a target that was just easily projected upon.”

She isn’t wrong. She was barely out of her twenties, still fighting off the awkward child-star label. Suddenly, she was the homewrecker in tabloids at every checkout line. No guardrails, no handlers, no Nashville PR fairy godmother to spin it pretty. The spotlight that made her famous turned her into public enemy number one.

It didn’t help that the affair was messy. Real Housewives fans lined up to defend Brandi, the jilted wife with two young kids at home. Brandi made a meal out of that heartbreak, milking the whole mess into more episodes, more books, more soundbites. Meanwhile, LeAnn slipped out the side door, vanished for a few years, and slowly crawled back once the hate cooled off. It’s almost impressive how they all somehow learned to fake-smile for a blended family Christmas card these days.

But underneath that Instagram peace treaty, LeAnn’s done the heavy lifting to get her head on straight. She talks about survival like someone who’s wrestled her demons on the kitchen floor. She says the world’s pain was never hers to carry forever. And maybe that’s true. Maybe there’s something to learn in that brutal honesty. “I’ve been cheated on, too,” she said. “So I know that feeling.” The irony stings. It’s all country songs in real life; everybody’s the cheater and the cheated on if you stick around long enough.

Nowadays, LeAnn’s hitting the road again, looking and sounding like a woman who’s earned her damn wrinkles. She’ll stand up there and belt out Blue like she’s still fourteen, but talk about heartbreak like she’s lived a hundred years since. Country music forgives its sinners eventually, sometimes faster than the fans do. But that’s the thing about this genre, it loves a comeback story almost as much as it loves a train wreck.

So call her what you want. A homewrecker, a target, a survivor. LeAnn Rimes is still standing in the flames she started, singing her lungs out, daring anybody to throw another match.