David Justice is speaking candidly about why his marriage to Halle Berry ended nearly three decades ago.

The former Atlanta Braves outfielder and first baseman revisited the relationship on the All the Smoke podcast with Matt Barnes. “She asked me to marry her after knowing me for five months,” he said. “I don’t know if my heart was really into it. But I didn’t want to make her feel bad and say no. I was just in the moment; it caught me off guard. We’re getting along, we’re vibing again, we’re only five months in, we’re still in the honeymoon stage.”

Justice said the couple married in 1993 and divorced in 1997. He recalled long stretches apart while Berry worked overseas. “It wasn’t really a lot of negative attention until I decided to leave her in 1996,” he said. “I realize this isn’t the person I wanted to spend my life with.”

He blamed immaturity and a narrow set of expectations shaped by his upbringing. “I’m a Midwest guy. So in my mind, I’m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, and I’m thinking, OK, if we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with? And at that time, as a young guy, she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like motherly.”

Justice told USA TODAY he thinks the marriage might have survived with help. “Honestly, we probably could have made it if I knew about therapy,” he said. “It’s just that because I was young, I had only been in honestly one real relationship before her. My knowledge and my understanding and my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast.”

He said one thing still bothers him. Berry disclosed to People in 1996 that an abusive, unnamed boyfriend struck her in the head and punctured an eardrum. “She let the world think it was me,” Justice said. “I thought she was dead wrong for that.”

“I look back on that situation and I’m like that girl really did love me. And I can see why she would be so mad at me,” Justice said. “Because imagine if you really love somebody and they tell you they want to break up, and there’s nothing you can say to get them back. That had to have been tough on her.”

Now older and more self-aware, he admits his exit was abrupt. “I didn’t ease out of the relationship. I could have massaged that better,” he said, adding that he wishes he’d had the maturity to approach their split differently.