Maria and I can come back together: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Los Angeles: Arnold Schwarzenegger says he and his estranged wife Maria Shriver can come back together as he is still in love with her.

"I still try to treat everyone as if we are together. Maria has a right to be bitterly disappointed and never look at me the same way again," he writes in his autobiography `Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story` about his divorce following the revelation about his love child with his former housekeeper Mildred Baena. "The public nature of our separation makes it doubly hard for us to work through it. The divorce is going forward, but I still have the hope that Maria and I can come back together as husband and wife and as a family with our children. "You can call this denial, but it`s the way my mind works. I`m still in love with Maria. And I am optimistic. All my life I have focussed on the positives. I am optimistic that we will come together again," he writes in the book, published by Simon and Schuster. With Maria, Arnold raised four children. He has termed his fling as "one of those stupid things that I promised myself never to do". At the marriage counselor’s office, when Maria sought divorce, Arnold tried to regain her trust by explaining that it was his screw up and she should not feel it had anything to do with her. "...You`re the perfect wife. It`s not because anything is wrong, or you left home for a week, or any of that. Forget all that. You look fantastic, you`re sexy, I`m turned on by you today as much as I was on the first date," the book quotes him as telling her. But Maria had made up her mind and they separated. Arnold says his busy schedule helped him after his separation as "otherwise I would have felt lost. I kept working and stayed on the move". PTI