Dan and Phil are a couple!
Famous YouTube duo Dan Howell and Phil Lester confirmed that they’ve been in a relationship since they started making videos together in 2009.
The pair posted a 46-minute video on Monday, titled “Are Dan and Phil in a Relationship?,” to share the news about “Phan” with their almost 3 million subscribers.
“Alright, let’s get this over with. Are Dan and Phil in a relationship?” Howell, 34, said, as Lester, 38, replied, “Yes.”
Howell and Lester — who both came out as gay separately in June 2019 — recalled that they fell into their romance “hard and fast in 2009” but didn’t put an official label on their relationship.
“And here we are, almost 16 years later,” Howell said.
“No, it’s not always perfect,” Lester noted of the relationship. “Don’t get it into your head that we are the ideal of human partnerships.”
“We have had ups and downs like anybody,” added Howell. “We have lived a thousand lifetimes of a normal person’s partnership and I have no idea why we’ve survived.”
Howell also explained that it took him time to talk about the relationship openly because of his “extremely homophobic childhood.”
“In my mid 20s I felt we had to hide the relationship because I was still hiding who I was to my friends, family, myself,” he said. “This is why all of the digging from people online hit a nerve, because Phil was my safe space. You were my first boyfriend… You were a literal ray of light in my life back then.”
Howell added: “Having all of these people trying to out us, and being so hostile to me when I tried to hide it, was so triggering. Honestly, it could have killed me.”
Howell also said that the couple “can’t live in fear anymore” and are done hiding their relationship.
Later in the video, the duo clarified that their content won’t turn into “couple vloggers in bed” because of their romance.
“We have been held back from doing this for so many years,” said Howell, “’cause of all the past trauma and terror of what could happen in the future.”
“But if you’ll have us,” Lester added, “we’d love to just finally be ourselves and do what we love, which is really how this should have been this whole time.”
The YouTubers ended their video by announcing “The Dan and Phil Podcast,” as Lester joked, “15 years of suppressing all of these stories and opinions and they’re finally gonna come out.”
