The Challenge: Vendettas champion Cara Maria Sorbello, 32, has finally broken her silence, just days after it was revealed that she and Ex on the Beach/Big Brother alum Paul Calafiore, 30, had broken up! Their split came after Cara discovered he was two-timing both her and his ex, Bachelor alum Danielle Maltby, 33, so now she has released a statement on the heartbreaking situation. “There were two completely different realities,” Cara Maria told PEOPLE on Dec. 28. “I lived in one. Danielle lived in the other.”
Cara’s relationship with Paul started in January 2018, when they were filming The Challenge: Final Reckoning. Even though he was still dating Danielle at the time, he and Cara Maria pursued a romance of their own. He and Danielle then split in June after the cheating scandal was made public, but they continued to see each other while he pursued an “open relationship” with Cara. And eventually, they discovered that he was two-timing both of them.
“At the start of our flirting, Paulie made jokes about his girlfriend being the type to ‘hold the video camera,’” Cara Maria explained. “He would regularly flirt and make sexual innuendos with me. After nine weeks of flirting with each other, he gave me the key to his room after a chess match while in the holding time between the Challenge house and the final. I went to his room and waited for him. He made sure no one was around and came to me. This is when we first hooked up. May 14. I am not proud of my actions. I was selfish and didn’t think of Danielle. I didn’t know her. … However, I chose to be with him. What I did was shameful.”
Cara Maria claims that Paulie promised he’d break up with Danielle and tell her everything when he got his phone back at the end of filming. “After filming ended, he told me he did just what he promised,” she said. “He said he told her EVERYTHING that happened and that he wanted to be with me. I found it honorable that he owned up to his actions. I was lost in my own happiness and excitement of this new budding relationship. I didn’t question a thing. He told me he needed to maintain a friendship with Danielle because she was a good human and in a bad place. I easily let him do that. I never knew about Mexico, Labor Day, or California where he met with her the day before we flew for this recent Challenge. I had suspicions about Mexico due to messages from a fan account but he denied being there and told me a different story. He was angry with me for even entertaining the thought that he could do that.”
She continued, “I never knew he was texting her that he loved her and was doing everything with me so he could further his Challenge career to make money for their future. I never knew all the things he was telling her especially after filming this season. I believed everything he told me because he never treated me badly. He was loving and physically and verbally affectionate. I’ve never been more happy and in love.”
Eventually, Danielle and Cara Maria joined forces and exchanged texts to see how much Paul had been two-timing them. And Cara Maria was shocked by their findings. “She saved me. We are not victims. We are not stupid,” she said. “We believed in the beautiful dream Paulie was selling because we loved him. We wanted it to be true and ignored anything telling us different. When you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags. All we wanted was honesty. Me and Danielle stand together. We are coming out with our story for no other reason than to hopefully stop this from happening to another girl.”
Danielle and Paul released their own statements as well, which you can read in full here!