LeAnn Rimes: I know why I cheated

It's been over two years since Us Weekly first broke news of LeAnn Rimes' extramarital affair with Eddie Cibrian — eighty-sixing both of their marriages — and the country singer, 28, isn't afraid to own up to her mistakes.

PHOTOS: LeAnn and Eddie's scandalous road to romance 

"I know I didn't do it the right way," Rimes says of falling for her "Northern Lights" costar in "Backstory: LeAnn Rimes," a new special airing Sunday on the Great American Country channel.

VIDEO: When LeAnn and Eddie were first caught cheating

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"I didn't have the tools to know how to do it the right way, how to let go the right way. I'd never been taught that," she says of cheating on then-husband Dean Sheremet with Cibrian, who was then wed to Brandi Glanville, mother to his two sons. (She and Cibrian, 37, are now engaged; Sheremet is also engaged to girlfriend Sarah Silver.)

PHOTOS: Other cheating scandals

"I have the strength [now] but I didn't at the time… So, it got really messy, but I have learned a lot from that. And I'm not glad it happened, but I know why it did."

She adds: "[Country music] has such a double standard. You know, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash and all these guys. God knows what they did back in the day? And if a woman did it, you never were accepted or forgiven. But if it was a guy, it was just their life… It's quite interesting to have to navigate those waters as a woman in this business."