As if couple drama wasn't enough...
Love triangles occasionally pop up on reality TV shows. The most recent example: Teen Mom 2 star Javi Marroquin says he and co-star Briana DeJesus are dating. He was previously married to cast member Kailyn Lowry and share a son, Lincoln.
"I actually don't know what their relationship status is," Lowry had previously said on E! News' Daily Pop. "And whatever it is I'm happy for them. As long as they're happy, that's fine with me."
The Bachelor and its spinoffs are ripe territory for love triangles, given the nature of the dating shows. One of the most shocking such sagas played out this past fourth season of Bachelor in Paradise between cast members Dean Unglert, Kristina Schulman and Danielle Lombard.
Reality TV triangles can also be manufactured. Case in point: Laguna Beach's Kristin Cavallari, her high school boyfriend Stephen Colletti and Lauren Conrad.
"My boyfriend at the time would take Lauren Conrad to dinner and buy her flowers, which never would have happened if it weren't for the show and MTV," she said on Oprah: Where Are They Now? in 2014. "I felt very used and manipulated."
In her 2012 book, Balancing in Heels: My Journey to Health, Happiness, and Making It All Work, Cavallari said, "One of the most hurtful things they did was pressure Stephen to spend time with another girl from the show, Lauren, while he and I were dating. It certainly provided some juicy conflicts, but it also affected me deeply. I felt threatened. On one side, it seemed like the producers were trying to break us up, which was intimidating. On the other side, I was worried that my relationship with Stephen was becoming less stable, even though I knew if we hadn't been on television, he wouldn't have been spending time with another girl."
Cavallari was later involved in another reality TV love triangle on The Hills, along with Audrina Patridge and Justin Bobby. Cavallari revealed on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live in 2012 that her relationship with him on the show was fake, while Patridge told E! News in 2014 that producers made them argue about him. MTV has not commented.
"I actually had to leave early for another event, we were there for about three hours and they were like, 'You can't leave until you and Kristin get into a fight.' So I'm like, 'Oh my God, Kristin!' Kristin's like, 'Let's do it.' I'm like, 'OK, c'mon,'" Patridge said. "It was about Justin and we did it and we got to leave."