Ashley Iaconetti is willing to take responsibility for cheating on Kevin Wendt with her now-fiance, Jared Haibon, in light of backlash from fans following Bachelor in Paradise's fifth-season premiere.
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Ashley and Kevin sparked a romance in late 2017 while filming The Bachelor Winter Games and decided to continue their relationship in the real world, but as previously revealed, Jared made his move on Ashley in an airport by kissing her in January 2018.
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It wasn't long after the kiss that Ashley dumped the Toronto firefighter and began dating her longtime crush and best friend in March.
"I had been dating Kevin, like, out in the real world for two weeks and Jared came out about his feelings and he kissed me in the airport," Ashley, 30, said during the Tuesday episode of The Ben and Ashley I: Almost Famous podcast.
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"And we had mentioned this before -- I admitted that I was dating Kevin and Jared kissed me."
Jared and Ashley announced in May to the public they are an item by starring on an episode of The Story of Us, and then Jared proposed marriage in June.
During Tuesday night's premiere of Bachelor in Paradise, Kevin expressed his frustrations about Ashley rekindling her relationship with Jared, whom she met on Bachelor in Paradise 2 in 2015.
"When Ashley and I left Winter Games, I knew I wanted to marry her one day. And then all of a sudden, Jared flips the switch and now he wants to be with her," Kevin vented to cameras.
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"I did try to make it work, but if you kiss another guy while you're dating someone else, it's cheating in my book. That really hurt me."
On her podcast, Ashley reportedly explained, "Whether you call that cheating, that is up to you. By most definitions it is, but it was just one of those moments of passion, one of those actions -- he pulled me in and I kissed him back."
Ashley apparently felt guilty the moment the lip-lock ended given Kevin cared for her and was putting a lot of effort into their long-distance relationship.
"When [Jared] pulled me in, the second thing I said -- He kissed me and then I said, 'I shouldn't have done that,'" Ashley confessed.
Ashley also insisted, "I never kissed him again until Kevin and I broke up after my birthday on March 6."
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Although Ashley admits her behavior was inappropriate, she fired back at haters in her podcast, claiming they probably would have done the same thing had they been in her shoes.
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"I, of course, was, like, overwhelmed with the thoughts of, like, 'Well, that felt right. That definitely felt right, but that was kind of like cheating. I can't believe that I would ever cheat,'" said Ashley, who was shown pursuing Jared and being friend-zoned by the suitor on Bachelor in Paradise 3 in 2016.
"It was one kiss a month into knowing Kevin with somebody that I had been really in love with for two and a half years and, like, people will say, 'Oh, that's cheating,' and sure, but don't tell me you wouldn't have gone through it."
Ashley claims to have been upfront with Kevin about the situation, so she admitted to Us Weekly that she was "a little confused" by Kevin's allegations on the Paradise premiere.
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"I definitely told him directly that Jared and I were together before it was a public thing. He made it sound like he was clueless to it," Ashley noted.
But there are no hard feelings, at least on Ashley and Jared's end of things. Jared, in fact, told the magazine, "I have nothing against him."
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"He's an ex of Ashley's. I have exes. I wish him the best. Obviously it's awkward watching an ex of hers on Paradise, but that's the world we live in, the world we chose to be a part of... I hope he finds somebody," Jared said.
Ashley and Jared's engagement is expected to air on a future episode of Bachelor in Paradise this summer.
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About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski