Demi told Derek Peth about her relationship with a woman on Tuesday's 'BiP.'
Demi Burnett opened up to Derek Peth about her relationship with a woman on Tuesday night's episode of Bachelor in Paradise -- and now she's defending herself against comparisons to Jed Wyatt.
The Bachelor alum felt vulnerable about her situation, revealing to Derek, whom she's been dating on Paradise for the last four days, that she had dated a woman before joining the show and was exploring her sexuality; Derek supported her after the reveal.
Demi had been open about her other relationship from Paradise's season premiere, but that didn't stop some members of Bachelor Nation from comparing Demi's romance to Jed's relationship with another woman, Haley Stevens, when he appeared on Hannah Brown's season of The Bachelorette. He didn't tell Hannah about Haley until after they were engaged, and waited weeks after that to come clean about not having broken up with her before leaving for The Bachelorette.
"I gotta throw this comment out there.... Demi has and is talking to a girl back home before she went on the show but Jed can't talk to a girl back home ....?!?" Connor Obrochta, who appeared on Becca Kufrin's season of The Bachelorette, wrote on Twitter Tuesday night. "Neither are ok #BachelorInParadise."
Paradise alum Tanner Tolbert also compared the pair. He deleted his original tweet, but defended his position to fans. "To be clear…I bashed Jed too," Tanner wrote, before sharing further tweets on the topic Wednesday morning.
Then Demi jumped in, tweeting at Tanner, "Oh f**k off, not the same at all. Maybe I can teach you a thing or two about going down on your wife @ttolbert05," she wrote.
"It’s not the same thing? Then how did I hear about your 'plan' before filming even started?" Tanner asked.
"There was NO PLAN. You are speaking on something you HEARD about as if it is a fact. I was 100 percent honest and upfront the entire time. You are a grown a** man tweeting about rumors," Demi replied.
"Gotcha... I must have dreamt it all up then... my bad," Tolbert said.
Hannah then offered her two cents. "One is my best friend, one is my ex-fiancé....I can tell you first hand, not the same," she wrote.
Ben Higgins addressed the differences between Demi and Jed's cases on his Almost Famous podcast.
"The difference is Demi told Derek she was dating a girl back home coming into the episode and still has feelings for this girl," he shared. "Tanner comes out publicly and asks ‘What is the difference?' Twitter reacted and said that the difference is that Jed was never truthful or purely honest with Hannah about his relationship back home and he hid it until the time they got engaged. Demi came out and talked about it in front of a long-term commitment to Derek."
Hannah, whom Demi came out to on the season premiere of Paradise, also fiercely has her back.
"I am proud of just how strong of a woman that she is, and how she is so brave to be able to kind of step into the unknown that the Bachelor franchise has never really put on display," she told ET. "She is being so courageous to tell her truth, and to show all different sides of who she is and what she believes loves is, and to be able to explore that."
Bachelor in Paradise airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Join ET's Bachelor Nation Facebook group here.
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