(Photo: John E. Davidson/Getty Images)

Despite being awarded full custody of his two sons in court last month, Usher insists there are no winners in the battle with his ex-wife, Tameka Foster. 
The R&B superstar poured his heart out to Oprah Winfrey on last night's Oprah's Next Chapter, telling the host, "this will be the only time that I've ever chosen to speak about it. I've been a man of integrity throughout the entire process, which I hope my boys will understand." 
Ush recalled seeing warning signs early on in the relationship, when his mother didn't approve of the union and refused to attend their nuptials. "I wanted to give her the wedding that she wanted. But I wasn't quite ready," Usher admitted. "I impregnated this woman, we were in a relationship, we were in love. I was taking responsibility."
He goes on to say that the pressures of his high-profile lifestyle and internal troubles with "communication, with understanding of how things go" caused the marriage to implode. "It is hard being married," he says candidly. Usher also admitted to being unfaithful to Foster toward the end of the marriage.
Usher filed for divorce in 2009, beginning a lengthy and highly acrimonious custody battle between the couple for their two children, Usher V and Naviyd. In court, Foster accused Usher of infidelity and of being an absentee father, the latter of which proved hardest for the chart-topper to swallow. 

"Absentee from the aspect of having to go and work, that probably would be her version or idea what absentee would be," he explained. "But no, I'm not an absentee father at all."
The judge presiding over their case clearly agreed with him, and awarded Usher full custody of the boys in August. The ruling, he says, caused a permanent fissure in his relationship with his ex. "The friend that I was to Tameka, I don't know that I could ever be again, because I really felt like we were friends. She made us enemies in a way that I could never understand. It wasn't until I was on the stand, where I cried, when I realized, 'Oh, this is an attack.'"
Sources revealed to the press that Usher stood by Tameka's side while her eldest son from a previous relationship, Kile Glover, was hospitalized following a tragic jet ski accident. Glover died on July 21 after three weeks on life support. It wasn't long before their truce was broken and they were back in court. 
"It's been definitely hard between me and my mother, and it may be hard between them and their mother in the future, but you've got to work through it," he told Oprah in summation. "You've got to be all right with people being who they are."

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