Lele Pons is reflecting on the moment she walked in on her father sleeping with another man.
The Latin pop star is telling all in her new YouTube series The Secret Life of Lele Pons, including how her relationship with her father Luis was impacted by his sexuality.
In part two of the show, she reveals that she learned he is gay when she was just a little girl. “It was hard for me at first. It was hard because I was repeating him saying he was gay until it sounded right in my head,” Lele shares, explaining how her OCD made this revelation more difficult. “So what happened was that I openly said he was gay—in my Catholic school. Impulsivity is a huge part of OCD. And when I found that my dad was gay, I said it during a presentation in my class. And everybody was, like: ‘This has nothing to do with what’s going on.'”
She adds, “And the teacher was, like—especially the teacher was very Catholic—she was, like: ‘Come here.'”
As Lele got older, she says that she loved and accepted her father, but she didn’t completely understand that he was truly into men until she walked in on him and another man. “I came to his room and I saw him actually, like, sleeping with a man. And I was, like, 10 years old, and that for me was, like: ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. Like, I saw… my dad.’ And that was very traumatizing, because I didn’t have to see that so vividly,” she recalls.
Though it was traumatizing, the 23-year-old says it helped them to grow “so close.”
Besides, she jokes that they’re now “even,” because he has since walked in on her during the act.
As for both of their relationships with her mother, Lele and her father share that he fights with her more because of Lele’s OCD. But as Lele sees it, they’re more frustrated because they can’t help her. She says that people with OCD need “professional help, not your parents,” because more often than not they feed into her potentially destructive behaviors.
But Luis explains that they don’t take it personally. He shares, “She really has made us the best people we can possibly be.”
To watch the full episode of Lele’s series, check out the video above. Episode three will go live next Tuesday on the star’s YouTube channel.