Yes, Dean Unglert knows "suffocating" sounded bad.
During the latest episode of his and Jared Haibon's iHeartRadio podcast Help! I Suck at Dating, the Bachelor Nation star spurred headlines when he described his girlfriend, former Bachelor star Caelynn Miller-Keyes, as the "most suffocating" person he's ever dated. But, as he pointed out during an interview with Us Weekly, context is everything.
"One of the questions was emailed into our podcast about being suffocating," he noted during the chat to explain why they had been using the word "suffocating" in the first place. "So that was the word that Jared and I were then using to, you know, kind of like find a common ground with that person that was talking about the suffocating relationship."
Still, there are better words to use when referring to your other half. "It's a horrible word, don't get me wrong. It's the wrong adjective to use to describe anyone in a relationship," he acknowledged to the magazine. "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."
His explanation echoed the reasoning he offered when he initially made the comments. "She latches on sometimes. I went on [Nick Viall's] podcast right when we started dating, Caelynn and I, and I was like, 'She's like velcro. She's always sticking to me'... She's always calling herself 'my little velcro,' or something stupid like that," he said during the podcast episode. "In my brain, I'm like, 'I don't like this,' but then it's happening and I'm like 'OK cool, this is actually really nice.'"
Clearly, the quality has been far from a dealbreaker for Dean, who recently celebrated his second anniversary with Caelynn. While he doesn't believe in soulmates, "If soulmates are a thing," he said on his podcast, "I would say, yes she's my soulmate."