In his first public comments in nearly four years, Jared Porter acknowledged sending the inappropriate messages that cost him his job as Mets general manager, said he holds no ill will toward the team and painted a picture of a changed man.

Porter had been hired as the GM in December 2020 and lasted in the role for 37 days.

In January 2021, ESPN reported he had sent lewd text messages — as well as a string of 62 unanswered texts — to a female journalist in 2016.

Mets owner Steve Cohen and then-president Sandy Alderson fired Porter, who had not spoken publicly since.

“I put myself in that situation,” Porter said on the “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast episode that was released Friday. “I made the decision to send the text messages that I sent, and I certainly shouldn’t have done it.”

Porter called his relationship with the reporter “not appropriate” for “a lot of reasons.” He was Cubs director of professional scouting when he met the reporter — a foreign correspondent who had moved to the United States to cover Major League Baseball and who asked ESPN to remain anonymous — and sent her repeated messages, long after she stopped responding, that culminated with an erect penis.

The woman, who had a limited grasp on English, according to ESPN, eventually sought help in crafting a response that asked him to stop, to which he complied and apologized.

The woman left journalism and returned to her home country. Porter rose through the industry, becoming an assistant general manager with the Diamondbacks before getting poached by the Mets, who were in the early days of the Cohen ownership.

Cohen announced the firing less than 12 hours after the ESPN story was published.

“They had to make the best decision for the New York Mets when that article came out, and I knew they would,” Porter said. “I hold zero ill will towards them whatsoever. I do think they made the best decision for the Mets. It’s unfortunate that I put myself and put them in that situation.”

After he was fired, Porter said he went to an inpatient mental health institute in Arizona for “about a week.” He cited a lack of boundaries and “huge emotional walls” that required professional mental help. A pressure-filled job and behavioral addictions — including an addiction to “seeking approval from other people,” he said — led to his decisions and professional demise.

“I literally went from trading for Francisco Lindor a few weeks earlier to being at an inpatient, mental-health institute where I wasn’t allowed to have shoelaces in my shoes until I was deemed not to be a suicide threat,” Porter said.

He transferred to an outpatient center for five days a week for eight weeks. He said he still sees a therapist, and he and his wife have attended mental-wellness retreats.

Porter has not returned to MLB and said he is involved with Blend, a company that is “blending mental health and mental performance” for athletes of all levels facing pressure.

Porter, who was hired during the throes of COVID-19, said he still has not met Cohen in person and never saw his office at Citi Field.

“I’m really grateful for all of it,” Porter said of the scandal. “It led me down a path of growth, of mental-health growth, of personal growth, of relationship growth that I absolutely never would have had if this didn’t happen to me.

“I do think it took probably, for me at least, a major incident like this to wake me up.”