ALBANY — “My conscience is clear. I feel a lot better,” Governor Paterson said yesterday after confessing that as a state senator he engaged in multiple extramarital affairs, including one several years ago with a woman who now reports to him in the executive chamber.

It was a day after taking the oath of office and less than a week after Governor Spitzer succumbed to the humiliation of reports that he was a regular client of a high-end prostitution ring and resigned. Mr. Paterson made a decision: It’s better to tell than to hide.

Whispers circulating in Albany about his infidelities caused him a slow-burning anxiety, he said. He feared that someone would blackmail him now that he was governor and threaten to expose his adultery unless he did their bidding. Above all, he was chastened by the example of Mr. Spitzer, who concealed his sexual indiscretions until they metastasized into a fullblown, career-exploding scandal. “I didn’t want it hanging over my head. I didn’t want to be compromised,” Mr. Paterson said, wearing a charcoal black suit and standing to the left of his wife of 15 years, Michelle Paige Paterson, a health care expert who acknowledged her own marital lapses in tandem with her husband.

So instead of waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall on his head, he cut the thread and invited the statehouse press corps for a therapeutic and probably onetime-only discussion that might as well have been titled: “Everything you wanted to know about David Paterson’s sex life but were afraid to ask.”

For about half an hour, he opened his sex life to scrutiny, fielding questions that under any other circumstances would be outrageously nosy.

“I just want to get straight with New York citizens so they know who their governor is and that their governor takes this office seriously,” he said.

Afterward, Mr. Paterson went back to business. He sat with legislative leaders for a public meeting about the budget, which is due March 31, and announced a proposal to slash an additional $800 million from Mr. Spitzer’s executive budget, including an across-the-board 2% reduction in operating spending for all state agencies.

New Yorkers watching him and his wife could be forgiven for doing a double take at the familiarity of the spectacle: another emergency press conference, another governor reckoning with an unseemly past, another leaden-faced wife sharing the dais with her husband.

Yet, yesterday was different from last week, as Mr. Paterson was careful to point out.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said, by which he meant that he didn’t break any laws. He is not known to be under investigation. And he volunteered the information.

Mr. Spitzer allegedly paid for sex — at a rate exceeding $4,000 a session. Mr. Paterson said the only sin he’s guilty of is betraying a commitment to his wife. Lawmakers, who last week called for Mr. Spitzer’s resignation, declined to lay a glove on Mr. Paterson, saying his adultery was a private matter.

If the extraordinary sequence of events in the last week has demonstrated anything, it’s that being a state leader in New York — or New Jersey, where Governor McGreevey’s alleged bedroom activities were in tabloid headlines again this week — these days apparently means having a sex life of an international rock star.

“Elected officials are just reflections of the people we represent. We all have problems,” Mr. Paterson said. But are our “problems” always so numerous?

In an interview with the Daily News, Mr. Paterson had suggested that his adultery was limited to one secret relationship. Yesterday, our governor confessed to having multiple extramarital affairs that ended around 2002, saying he had relationships with “a number of women.” As forthcoming as he was yesterday, he declined to provide a total figure, leaving reporters to speculate.

He characterized his behavior as a rash of “poor judgment,” prompted by his discovery that his wife had betrayed him. “I was pretty upset,” he said. He and his wife sought counseling and concluded that they still loved each other and that they wanted to stay together.

The admission by Mr. Paterson was a startling break of tradition for an elected official. Reporters or campaign opponents are generally the ones to drag out a skeleton. Seldom does a politician go out of his way to hand over the closet key.

Talk about infidelity is common here but has generally been considered a subject relegated to latenight conversation at bars. That Mr. Paterson would devote an entire press conference to his unfaithfulness struck some lawmakers as a breach of code that would lead to invasions of their own lives.

At the very least, it raised a variety of questions about Mr. Paterson’s conduct. He denied he spent taxpayer money on any of the relationships, but said he wasn’t sure if his campaign funds ever commingled with money he spent on the trysts. Yesterday, his staff rummaged through old campaign records to locate receipts showing payments to a no-frills Upper West Side hotel, the setting for many of his trysts.

Only one of the women with whom he was romantically involved, he said, was a state employee.

The New York Sun confirmed her identity with two Spitzer administration officials.

Her name is Lila Kirton, 49, a former Queens assistant district attorney who handled constituent work for Mr. Spitzer when he was attorney general and governor.

She currently serves as director of community affairs in the office of intergovernmental affairs. Mr. Paterson said he “inherited” her when he became governor and said it was her decision whether to stay in the administration.

Campaign records show that Mr. Paterson’s state Senate committee account paid her $500 in 2002 for unspecified “professional services.”