Demi Lovato disses ex Wilmer Valderrama over age-gap romance

Demi Lovato called her 12-year age-gap relationship with ex Wilmer Valderrama “not OK.”

The “Confident” singer shaded the “NCIS” actor without mentioning him by name on Tuesday’s episode of Keke Palmer’s podcast, “Baby, This is Keke Palmer.”

“I’m sitting here in this state of mind today, like, grateful for everything that I’ve been through,” Lovato, 33, said. “It was really challenging. There wasn’t a lot of time for play, but when I did, I played pretty hard.”

Palmer, 32, added, “I feel like people don’t understand that that’s what we was dealing with, you know? I found myself dating. I’m 15. Why is my boyfriend 20?”

“Why was my boyfriend 30?” Lovato quipped, referring to Valderrama, now 46. “You know what I’m saying?”

Lovato and Valderrama were 18 and 30 years old, respectively, when they started dating in 2010. They broke up in 2016.

Palmer told Lovato that as child stars, they “were trying to find outlets and just a way to process” their lives by dating older men.

“Nobody our age could understand,” Lovato noted. “But then you look back in hindsight, when I turned 30 I was like, ‘That’s not OK’”

“Girl, the moment that you realize and you get to the age that a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff,” Palmer continued. “It’s almost a mental break that can happen because you realize you were taken advantage of. ‘Oh, I was being exploited.’”

Lovato added, “Especially if you are an older soul, too. Especially if you’re mature for your age.”

The “Camp Rock” alum also confirmed to Palmer that she wrote her 2022 song “29” about being with an older partner.

 “When you listen to it, I think you’ll be able to relate to it,” Lovato said.

The lyrics to “29” reference Valderrama’s age when the exes met and Lovato being “too young to drink wine.”

“Just five years of bleeders, student and a teacher / Far from innocent / What the f–k’s consent? / Numbers told you not to / But that didn’t stop you,” she sings in the song.

In her 2017 documentary, “Simply Complicated,” Lovato described meeting the “That ’70s Show” alum at his house in January 2010.

“[When] I laid eyes on him for the first time, I was in hair and makeup and he came in and sat down and I was like ‘I love this man’ and ‘I have to have him,’” she recalled. “But I was only 17, so he was like, ‘Get away from me.’”

“After I turned 18, we began dating,” Lovato continued. “I think it was love at first sight, and I don’t really believe in that, but I believe that it happened.”

The exes remained amicable after their 2016 split. Valderrama even visited Lovato in the hospital after her 2018 overdose.

The “Encanto” star is currently engaged to Amanda Pacheco, with whom he shares two children.

Lovato, for her part, married musician Jutes, 34, in California last May.