Meredith Vieira is living proof that abusive relationships can happen to anyone.

On Wednesday, Vieira opened up on her show, "The Meredith Vieira Show," about how she, just as Ray Rice's wife, Janay Palmer, was in an abusive relationship.

"Every nine seconds, a woman is abused or assaulted in this country," she said on the show, which was recorded on Tuesday. "Every nine seconds this is going on."

She explained that a Twitter campaign, which uses the hashtags #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft, reveals just how complicated domestic violence is.

As someone who had been in an abusive relationship when she was younger, Vieira wanted to explain why she stayed.

"It started out, we'd have a fight and he'd just sort of grab my arm," she said. "I didn't think a lot about it, and then it turned into pushing me into a wall and then it went beyond that, to [his] actually taking his hand and grabbing my face and saying, 'I could ruin your career if I wanted to and no one would watch you.'"

At the time, she heard people saying that only those who didn't have the "wherewithal" or "means" to get out were the ones that stayed in abusive relationships. This didn't apply to Vieira.

She had a job, and she was a college-educated woman.

She's thought a lot about why she did stay, and she believes it was because of fear.

"I was scared of him," she said. "I was scared if I tried to leave something worse could happen to me. Part of it was guilt, because every time we would have a fight he would then start crying and say, 'I promise I won't do it again,' and I would feel like maybe I contributed somehow to this..."

She said what she felt was very similar of what they are saying about Ray Rice's wife, where domestic abuse is the fault of both parties involved.

One time, her boyfriend, whom she shared an apartment with, threw her naked into the shower under very hot water. He then locked her out, where she waited for two hours for him to come home. He then cried and apologized.

Vieira stayed in the relationship until she was offered a job in another city.

Watch the entire video below: