LeAnn Rimes has made her share of headlines in the last few years, between her feud with reality star Brandi Glanville and rumors that her marriage to Eddie Cibrian is on the verge of ending. But now, it’s her ex-husband who’s grabbing the attention, and he’s opening up about their relationship and how blindsided he was by her affair with Cibrian.

Dean Sheremet, who was married to Rimes for seven years, says the country singer depended on him for everything when they were together, and the pressure got to be too much. When it began to get in the way of their relationship, he says, he realized that he had never had a chance to do any of the things he wanted to do.

“I felt like I was never having my needs met so there was fighting. And I was so intertwined in managing her career that I didn’t know how to make the distinction between husband and boss, husband and partner, husband and manager… I was husband, father, friend, lover, manager. There were so many hats and I didn’t know what hat to wear when,” Sheremet told Nat’s Next Adventure. “There were things she couldn’t do without me. She had her own phone but never used it. People would call me to get to her. Everything went through me.”

He says he never believed that Rimes would cheat on him, and when he found out about her affair with Cibrian–on the set of the 2009 Lifetime movie Northern Lights–it hit him hard. After leaving the set of the film due to illness, he returned a week later and realized things had changed.

“There was this bar that everyone hung out at after set and I remember coming down the stairs and seeing the two of them shooting pool together,” he recalls. “I could just tell by the body language that everything had changed. She’s shooting pool, shooting tequila, in a tight tank, tight jeans, over the knee boots and she’s standing across from him, playing with the pool cue. All of a sudden, there was a huge shift. My stomach dropped. I literally felt like I got hit.”

Rimes and Cibrian starred in their own reality show for VH1 last year, though it was short-lived. Rimes’ feud with Brandi Glanville–Cibrian’s ex-wife, who was still married to him when he and LeAnn got together–has been well-documented on social media and in her memoir, Drinking And Dating.