Dean Explained What He Meant When He Called Caelynn "Suffocating"

Communication is the key to a happy relationship, but some miscommunication led fans to believe their fave BIP couple may be having relationship issues. During the Aug. 30 episode of his podcast, Help! I Suck at Dating, Dean Unglert described his girlfriend as “the most suffocating” person he's ever dated and even compared her to velcro. “I actually kind of enjoy it so it's kind of nice,” he said, but that didn’t stop fans from criticizing his choice of words. Two days later, Dean Unglert clarified his comment calling Caelynn Miller-Keyes "suffocating" after realizing a few headlines made it seem like he was being smothered in his relationship.

“It’s a horrible word, don’t get me wrong. It’s the wrong adjective to use to describe anyone in a relationship,” he told Us Weekly in a Sept. 1 interview. “I was simply saying that in past experiences, I would hate to be suffocated, but with Caelynn, although my instinct is to say, ‘Don’t suffocate me,’ in reality, I’m like, ‘You can suffocate me because I enjoy spending time with you’ sort of thing.” He also noted that — even though his comment “sounds bad” both in and out of context of the podcast episode — he hadn’t intended to criticize Miller-Keyes.

During his Us Weekly interview, Unglert also clarified what he’d meant when he told his Help! I Suck at Dating co-host Jared Haibon that he doesn’t like to say the L-word in any of his relationships. “I do say ‘I love you’ to Caelynn,” he clarified to Us Weekly. “[But] I am in the camp of I’d rather show Caelynn that I love her rather than say that I love her.” The Bachelor Nation star explained how he thinks “talk is cheap” and why he prefers to show someone that he loves them through “acts of service.” That makes sense to me... but unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Unglert has found himself in hot water after making remarks about his relationship with Miller-Keyes.

In December 2019, just about six months after he and Miller-Keyes got together on BIP, Unglert told Us Weekly he had zero interest in marrying his GF. "That's never going to happen," he told Us Weekly when asked about the possibility of tying the knot with Miller-Keyes. "She does joke around about us getting married all the time, and I always say, 'Sorry, it's not going to happen.'" And though the two did end up exchanging promise rings the following year, it seems Unglert is sticking by his no-marriage policy.

And let’s not forget that comment Unglert made criticizing Miller-Keyes’ relationship history. "A long time ago, when we first started dating, there were things where I was, like, disappointed about or just upset to hear, you know what I mean, about Caelynn's dating history," he said on his podcast in November 2020. Although Unglert didn’t go into detail, he did admit he didn’t have the right to judge Miller-Keyes’ romantic past. “If you were to flip it around and put me in the same position that I'm putting her in, I would look 20 times worse,'" he continued. "So I'm not gonna sit here and be a hypocrite and be upset about something that she might or might not have done while I have done the same thing, if not worse, 10 times over."

They may have their ups and downs, but as long as they’re happy (and as long as Unglert doesn’t actually feel “suffocated” by his relationship), then I’m happy.