Kerry Washington regrets being so public about her last relationship

She told Bustle: "BN - Before Nnamdi - I was in a very public relationship and engagement, like I was on the cover of a bridal magazine. When that relationship ended, I thought, Going forward, I need to have a different kind of boundary, so that my relationships can belong to me. So even in the years of dating after that, I was very private, which was good, because those were my wild years.

"When I met my husband, he was also very private. It was a shared value. We started dating right before 'Scandal', and he had been on the cover of Sports Illustrated. We both wanted to protect our relationship. By the time people started talking trash, we were happily married and pregnant. He was massaging my feet while we were laughing about some story on the internet about him partying at the Super Bowl without me. We'd built so much trust that those attacks didn't put a dent in what we'd created together."

And, both Kerry, 47, and Nnamdi, 42 want their children - 10-year-old daughter Isabelle, son Caleb, seven, and the former NFL player's teenage daughter, who he has with a previous partner - to be able to choose if they want a public life.

Kerry said: "I want them to make decisions about [that] when their brains are fully developed. I'm not making it for them. They didn't choose to be born into the public eye."

Kerry previously said she keeps her children out of the spotlight so they can "define a life for themselves".

She told PEOPLE magazine: "I think just from the very beginning, Nnamdi and I have been really protective of our partnership and our relationship, because we wanted it to belong to us, and we found that we were able to define and create a relationship for ourselves and with each other outside of the public eye.

"And I think in many ways, we just want to give our kids that same opportunity to define a life for themselves and to enter the public space in their own way."