Kenny Chesney was a guest on Oprah on Friday. He touched on his four month marriage to Renee Zellweger in 2005 and said he “panicked” when Zellweger didn’t fit into the life he’d created for himself, which he described as a “box”. He also explained that he wasn’t prepared to give up his identity to be married, which Oprah said she could relate to. Chesney looked really uncomfortable with the whole thing and at one point he started laughing maniacally in a way that seemed like he was compensating for something. (Huffington Post has the video.)

This isn’t the first time Chesney has addressed the issue. He told Anderson Cooper in early 2007 that the reason Zellweger listed “fraud” on their annulment papers was simply for legal purposes and that “The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that… I really understood what it was like to be married.” He later told Playboy that the end of their marriage was “a mutual thing.” (In that same interview, he bragged about sleeping with over a hundred women.) Then, in October, 2008 he told Newsweek that he was “was probably as emotionally and mentally exhausted as I’d ever been” after the breakup.

So it’s not like Chesney has refused to talk about Zellweger until now. Renee has only addressed the relationship briefly, and told Time that it was “devastating” and that breaking up “is a very sad experience for anyone to go through, and it’s not fun when people decide that it’s a lovely thing to capitalize on.” I wonder what she thinks about Chesney’s comments to Oprah:

Country superstar Kenny Chesney was on Oprah Friday, and as only she can do, Oprah got him to talk about his short-lived marriage to Renee Zellweger.

The pair met in January 2005, married in May 2005 and had the marriage annulled that September, citing “fraud.”

After Kenny talked about how busy he is, Oprah asked if the lack of time was what happened to his relationship with Renee.

He said, “that and the fact that I panicked.” Then he started talking about “the box” in which he put everything he values, like his friends and musical success, and how he worked to “protect it… I protected that box.” So, Oprah asked, where was his marriage to Renee?

“Well, it was out.. out of the box!”, he exclaimed with a maniacal laugh. But he did call Renee a “sweet soul.”

Chesney then said he still hoped to be married, but “felt that the idea of marriage made me lose my identity… I just don’t know that I’ve found anybody bigger than that.”

[From Huffington Post]

I’m thinking that a guy sleeps with whichever groupies will have him isn’t the type of person who is about to settle down. Chesney is 42 and he’s not going to open his “box” for a woman to come in and rearrange things. Oprah’s box seems pretty well organized too.