If Bachelor Nation knows one thing about Dean Unglert, it’s that he’s never been afraid to express his hot takes on marriage.
ABC viewers met Unglert on Rachel Lindsay’s season of The Bachelorette in 2017. After a messy stint on season 4 of Bachelor in Paradise, he returned for season 6 of the spinoff and met Caelynn Miller-Keyes. While he broke up with her on the show — on her birthday — he returned to win her back and they left the beach as a couple during summer 2019.
“It’s funny, I don’t think a single person thought we were going to last and even we were like, ‘No, I don’t know what’s going to happen here.’ So, we definitely defied the odds,” she exclusively told Us Weekly on the “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast ahead of their two-year anniversary in June 2021. “I think that’s just our unique relationship and we really try not to listen to it. When you go on the show, so many people are going to have so many opinions about your relationship — good and bad. I think we just never really listened to those negative peopl, and we just lived our lives.”
She continued: “My birthday was on [June 15] and Dean dumped me on my birthday two years ago. He came back five days later, so our anniversary is June 20. It’s kind of like a week of celebrating, my birthday into the anniversary.”
While Unglert often makes headlines for his comments about their romance, Miller-Keyes told Us that it “really frustrates” her when people think he isn’t a good boyfriend.
“He is hilarious and he’s very sarcastic and he’s also the most romantic person I think I’ve ever met. He’s so thoughtful,” she said at the time. “So I think that’s a big misconception — that I’m, like, more invested in the relationship or he, like, doesn’t treat me right. I’m like, ‘No, he treats me exceptionally well and he’s always going out of his way to just surprise me and do romantic things.’”
Unglert, meanwhile, has clarified speculation about their relationship on several occasions. In September 2021, he spoke to Us about his remarks that Miller-Keyes is the “most suffocating” girlfriend he’s ever had.
“It’s a horrible word, don’t get me wrong. It’s the wrong adjective to use to describe anyone in a relationship. 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 told Us.
The Bachelor Winter Games alum also addressed his claims about not saying “I love you” to his girlfriend.
“I do say ‘I love you’ to Caelynn,” he said. “I am in the camp of I’d rather show Caelynn that I love her rather than say that I love her. … Talk is cheap more or less, you know, anyone can say anything, but what it boils down to in my eyes is action over words.”
When it comes to marriage, however, the jury is still out for the pair. Scroll through for everything they’ve said:
