Paige DeSorbo opened up about why she’s keeping her relationship with Joe D’Amelio mostly under wraps.
“When you’re on reality TV, it’s kind of your job to say everything that you’re thinking,” DeSorbo, 33, told Variety on Wednesday, September 23. “Now if it doesn’t come up naturally, I’m not going to force it.”
She explained, “I’m not boasting about my relationship, because it is pretty much like everyone else’s. I’m kind of, like, ‘Who cares?’”
One thing she appreciates about her romance not being filmed since her exit from Summer House is that she hasn’t “been at a dinner where someone asked, ‘Do you even trust him?’”
“So that’s been kind of nice,” she added.
Elsewhere in the profile, DeSorbo opened up about being in a physically and mentally abusive relationship when she was in college.
At first, she “didn’t talk about it” to anyone other than a few “close friends” and later her family. “I felt like ‘How could I let this happen to me?’ I didn’t want them to think less of me,” she shared. “I thought that way for the rest of my 20s, and I just really never brought it up.”
A few years ago, she started feeling like she was “doing a disservice” by not sharing her experience with her fans.
“I think my ‘character’ on ‘Summer House’ was strong and confident, and the No. 1 thing about domestic violence is it can truly happen to anyone,” she explained. “I felt like I was a good example of, ‘She doesn’t take s*** from anyone she’s dating.’ I felt almost a little fraudulent not saying that I had been through this, because it shaped a lot of how I did date in my later 20s.”
DeSorbo and D’Amelio, 37, first sparked dating rumors when she was seen watching a football game together in January 2025, one month after she announced her breakup from Craig Conover. The following month, they were seen holding hands at the Super Bowl.
In July 2025, a source exclusively told Us that she and D’Amelio had been dating “for a while now, and things between them are going really well.”
“It took a few months for Paige to warm up to being in another relationship again, but she moved on after Craig and is genuinely happy,” the source added.
More recently, DeSorbo exclusively told Us in February that they were “exclusive.”
“I’m in my 30s, so it’s not like I’m out every single weekend going out on multiple dates like I would have been in my 20s,” she said. SeDorbo also joked that dating an Italian man came with many perks, including that “they know when to speak and when not to.”
“And I like that,” she quipped. “That’s important. It’s important [for] a man to know when to shut it.”
