Demi Lovato has opened up about her eight year relationship with actor Wilmer Valderrama and claimed that their large age-gap was ‘not OK’.
Demi Lovato has suggested that she was being “exploited” by her former age-gap romance when she was a teenager.
Lovato, 33, appeared on the latest episode of the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast and spoke with the actress over a shared experience of being in relationships with adult men as teenagers.
Lovato met her ex, actor Wilmer Valderrama, in January 2010, when they were 17 and 29, respectively.
They were on and off for six years until ending their romance for good in 2016.
Opening up about her own experiences, Palmer recounted: “I found myself dating. I’m 15, why was my boyfriend 20? We were trying to find outlets, though, and a way to process this.”
Lovato replied: “Why was my boyfriend 30? … Nobody our age could understand. But then you look back in hindsight — when I turned 30, I was like, ‘That’s not OK.’”
Palmer remembered thinking such age-gap relationships were “normal in my mind” at the time because “you’re mature for your age,” but now realises how inappropriate they were.
“The moment when you realise, and you get to the age of a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff, it’s almost a mental break that can happen,” she said. “Because you realise, ‘You were taking advantage of me.’ ‘Oh, I was being exploited.’ At 15, I’m thinking, ‘My boyfriend’s older, because I’m doing an older job … This is the way it is.’ It seemed normal in my mind.”
Lovato previously opened up in an interview with Complex in 2015 about how her relationship with Valderrama began.
“We shot a PSA together for the 2010 Census forms for Voto Latino,” she told Complex. “We shot them at his house, so we actually met there. Of course, I was like, ‘Oh my god. You’re so attractive.’ And he was like, ‘You are not 18. Get away from me.”
“Then we became really good friends, and he was there for me through a number of situations and breakups and whatever. Then as I got older, and we grew closer, it was like, ‘Hey, maybe we should try this thing out.’ We did, and we’ve basically been together ever since.”
On her most recent record, Lovato alluded to the relationship without mentioning the actor by name, instead describing a relationship with an age-gap of 12 years.
On the track, named 29, she sings: “Just five years a bleeder/Student and a teacher/Far from innocent/What the f**k’s consent?/Numbers told you not to/But that didn’t stop you.”
