Juan Pablo & Clare: Did They or Didn't They?

Contestants on The Bachelor are often seen reduced to tears, especially as the weeks pass and the tensions, stakes, and feelings become all that much more real. But it's rare that The Bachelor himself makes a woman cry by his words alone. Yet this is just what happened on Monday's episode when Juan Pablo pulled aside Clare and let her know just how much he regretted their private ocean excursion. But now the contestant is sticking up for herself: Clare claims Juan Pablo's comments were completely inappropriate.

"You shouldn't make a woman cry, whether it's right or wrong," she said. "And it was pretty bad at the time. It was pretty bad. It made me feel awful. Maybe at that time he didn't know exactly what he was feeling and he just felt bad about it. But again, we swam in his pool in his room and to me, that was more questionable than swimming in the ocean! That was my struggle."

And in her quest to find love, Juan Pablo's comments admittedly set her feelings back. "It makes you question things more and it was something I didn't want to do... I wanted to put myself into a situation with a man who wanted the same thing as me, and it did make me question it a little bit because I thought we were on the same page."

But what has been equally as reported on is whether or not Clare and J.P. went all the way in the waves. While the editing of the show certainly seemed to point in that direction, with comments such as "I don't regret it," (usually reserved for sexual circumstances) and J.P.'s "I regret it" speech to Clare, the severity of the situation was played up. But now, the 32-year-old hairdresser wants everyone to know exactly what did or didn't happen. So she'll finally answer the question: did Clare and Juan Pablo have sex?

First of all, I'm thankful to have this opportunity to even talk about this, because I don't think it was made clear by anybody that that's not what happened. I don't want that incident to be anything equivocal. I do want to say that that's not what happened. That was not my intention going into it and as everybody in that situation knows, that's not what happened. I think that's why I was caught off-guard [by Juan Pablo's reaction] because that didn't happen.

But wait a minute, didn't Clare give a toast that evening to "making love"?

Nothing had happened, so that wasn't even on my radar when I gave that toast. It was moreso my intention for the future and my hopes and dreams for the future and something I was looking forward to because I was falling in love. Being in the ocean and swimming in the ocean, all those words ... that I was using to describe how I felt that night could be misinterpreted, but it was truly my description of falling in love. People can take what they want from it and interpret it how they want, but my intention was all about falling in love.

She goes on to say that what they did in the ocean, whatever that might have been, was mutual, and that they were having "mutual fun." Which begs the question, why would we need to discuss it being mutual if it wasn't sexual behavior?

Clare ended her conference with some very specific words for Juan Pablo:

I just think that if you're going to be entering into something of this nature, you want to know exactly what you want and exactly what you're looking for and exactly your boundaries and exactly your integrity. Have that set up so you don't have regrets and you don't have questions. You want to feel solid with what you want and that goes for even if you're not on TV.

Amen sister.

Image: ABC