Danielle Lombard Gets Real About Her 'BIP' Love Triangle: "Dean Liked Me More"

Season 4 of Bachelor In Paradise ended with more of a whimper than a bang. There was one engagement and a ton of breakups. One of the most talked about plots of the show was the awkward and hard to watch love triangle that formed between Dean Unglert, Danielle Lombard, and Kristina Schulman. In the end, Kristina removed herself from the situation and left Danielle and Dean to their pool canoodling. However, Paradise doesn't last forever — Dean and Danielle have since split. Why did Danielle and Dean break up? Why does anyone break up? BECAUSE OF DEAN, APPARENTLY.

In a Reddit AMA on Tuesday, Sept. 26, Danielle did not hold anything back. She previously competed for Nick Viall's heart on Season 21 of The Bachelor, but BIP brought a whole new basket of crazy. Danielle unsuspectingly arrived in Paradise during Week 2 and used her date card to throw a wrench in the Dean and Kristina romance.

Dean and Kristina were a fan-favorite couple, so someone tearing them apart seemed crazy. In the end, Danielle didn't really tear them apart. She thought Dean liked her (which he did) and Kristina thought Dean liked her (which he also did). Dean sat around smiling and was never fully honest with either of them. When a fan asked Danielle about why she and Dean broke up after getting back together after Paradise, she wrote,

He contacted me immediately after we left [Bachelor in Paradise] and had told me that he was 'encouraged' to say those things on camera. We spent close to five hours on the phone before I came to a point where I believed him. I honestly think I'm too forgiving and wanted to trust him. But his words and actions continued to contradict each other afterwards and we ended our relationship before the reunion show.

Sounds like something that totally could've happened. Danielle and Kristina both called out Dean during the BIP reunion and it was savage.

During the episode, Dean revealed that he still had emotions for Kristina. To which Kristina responded,

I hope that whoever is next in your relationship that you will never treat them like that … I was really willing to work on it because I believed in us, but I will alway share that love for you because it was intense, but it was real and I haven't experienced that before… I will always have a special place in my heart for you, Dean.

Kristina has a great way of telling it like it is in the most brutal way. Then, Kristina and Danielle accused Dean of "flip-flopping" with them  — which I think we are all in total agreement that's what he did the whole flip-flopping time.

The love triangle was uncomfortable to watch. It all came to a head when Danielle and Dean were making out in the pool and Kristina was right there.

Danielle and Dean claimed on-screen they couldn't see Kristina or her salad, but a Redditor asked if that was the truth. Danielle said,

That was so crazy to watch back because both Dean and I honestly had no idea that she was there. It was one of those moments where you watch back and cringe. I would never do something like that intentionally and my whole experience in that love triangle was that Dean liked me more, but was too nice to be direct with Kristina in that he wanted to pursue a relationship with me. Then later I found out that after that night in the pool, Dean went to bed and Kristina came to his room crying and asked if she could sleep next to him.

In Danielle's defense — all of us had a weird experience watching the love triangle.

As far as pursuing other relationships in Paradise, Danielle wishes the show would have aired her brief romance with Ben Zorn. She divulged,

I wish they would have aired my relationship with Ben [Zorn] because I think it shows I wasn't pursuing Dean. I also wish they showed more of my in depth conversations with Dean. The things he said to me, versus what he said in his ITM's were completely different.

ITM stands for "in the moment," referring to The Bachelor's signature on-the-fly interviews. Personally, I would have loved to see some romance happen with Ben. Oh well.

As of now, all the former contestants seem to be in a good place. I'm sure Arie's season of The Bachelor will bring in a whole new batch of potential crazies people for Paradise.

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