"Big Brother" Season 27 runner-up Vince Panaro is owning up to his mistakes after leaving the house — and opening up about how his time on the show affected his relationship.

In a new YouTube video, Vince reflected on the season and addressed criticism over his close friendship with fellow contestant Morgan Pope while he was still in a relationship with his longtime girlfriend, Kelsey.

“The more common question that everybody is asking me, is ‘What is my relationship like?’ Kelsey and I have talked everything out,” Vince said. “We have talked about everything and anything possible, and we’re currently taking time to process everything individually, and, you know, figure out what things look like after that.”

Vince explained that his first priority after leaving the show was reconnecting with Kelsey. “She had the respect for me to be the first person that I see on finale night and to stick around and have those conversations with me, when she could have left and never spoken to me again,” he said. “She was there to first, above everything else, make sure I was okay mentally coming out of there, knowing the backlash that I was going to be receiving.”

He added that Kelsey was also taking time for herself. “She has enough respect for herself to take her own independent time and figure out what she wants and to process her own experience individually, and I respect that, too.”

Vince admitted that some of the criticism he’s received was fair. “Living in the Big Brother house is a strange, indescribably unique environment,” he said. “Lines started to blur and I felt like any level of affection was normal in that alternate reality I was living in. And some people will say, ‘How can you be that stupid, how could you not see it?’ And to them I can only say, ‘You’d be surprised, I can be that stupid, I guess.’”

“In hindsight,” he continued, “I can 100 percent see how my actions were disrespectful to having a girlfriend. And I’m sorry for that. To be honest, that’s on me, 100,000 percent, because I’m the one who set the boundaries. I was the one who was in a relationship.”

Vince said that his closeness with Pope “helped me mentally” while living in isolation but admitted that, “outside, I could see that not being respectful to having a girlfriend. I should have been extra cautious. The fact of the matter is I wasn’t.”

He also clarified that he never meant to hurt anyone. “I never wanted to embarrass anybody — not Kelsey, because she didn’t sign up for the show,” he said. “I’m not okay with hurting people, even if I didn’t mean to, because I still hurt people and that’s not okay. That’s something I feel really, really bad about and that’s something I have to live with.”

Ultimately, Vince said he takes full responsibility for what happened. “It wouldn’t matter whether we were on the verge of breaking up before going into the house or whether we were on the verge of getting engaged,” he shared. “The fact of the matter is, I was in a relationship entering that house … I set those boundaries … that’s all on me. And I understand the way that it looked.”

Despite the drama, Vince called his time on "Big Brother" an “incredible experience” that made him an even “bigger fan” of the show.

Panaro finished the season as runner-up to winner Ashley Hollis.