Shocking Hills flashback! Now older, wiser, and retired from reality TV, Lauren Conrad shares a painful truth about her time on MTV's hit series. "I knew back back then [that] I was being cheated on," she admits in the March issue of Seventeen magazine.
Conrad doesn't specify which of her past boyfriends (who have included Jason Wahler, Stephen Colletti and, briefly, Brody Jenner) were cheaters, but explains that she turned the other cheek. "I overlooked it."
Not any more. "The more confident me has come to the point where I've finally realized it's not something that everyone does. It's not okay to have your guy hook up with someone else. You deserve more."
Conrad, now 24, began dating My Boys actor Kyle Howard in 2008, while she was still filming The Hills — and figured out how to keep the romance off of MTV's cameras. "By the time I had met Kyle, I had already perfected my 'double life,'" she explains. "There was my TV life and my real life."
Despite her much-scrutinized friendships with Heidi Montag, Audrina Patridge and other Hills stars, Conrad says that "Most of my closest friends were never on the show; my family was rarely on…It's not normal to put every part of your personal life on camera. You have to have something for yourself or you'll go crazy."
Now a writer and fashion designer, Conrad releases her second novel, Sweet Little Lies, this month; it's the follow-up to L.A. Candy, a book full of Hills-like characters, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
