Robert Valletta is officially hanging TVs in seven minutes for another woman. The This Is LA host has been seeing model Heather Love Whiting for the past eight months, Us Weekly can exclusively reveal.

“It was slow and we kind of started out as friends and then it’s just, that’s it. It’s the real deal,” Valletta, 38, told Us at the season 3 premiere party on Thursday, April 18. “I can legitimately say I’m in love and I’m happy and it’s fun.”

The soap opera alum added that he’s “pretty sure” Love is “The One” for him.

“Dating is very interesting in L.A. and I am happy to be where I’m at with an awesome person,” he explained. “[With Heather] there’s no drama, there’s no anything. It really is just an easy thing … one thing I’ve always had is I always have really good friendships with my girlfriends and we had that same thing, but at the same time, there’s just no drama. It’s just an easy situation and she actually makes my life better by just being in it.”

Valletta appeared on season 6 of Vanderpump Rules after reconnecting with Scheana Shay, whom he first dated before she married her now ex-husband Mike Shay in 2014. The SUR waitress, 33, revealed during the season 7 premiere that the duo called it quits after a year of dating. Last month, however, Scheana told Us that the pair “lightly rekindled” their friendship “around the holidays” in 2018, until Valletta “heard a rumor” about her.

“It was a completely convoluted, exaggerated story,” Scheana told Us in March. “And the fact that he just believed this person and cut me off so quickly after wanting to be back in my life, that’s just not someone I need around me.”

Valletta, for his part, told Us on Thursday that the exes “tried to sort of rekindle [their] friendship a little bit.”

“There’s certain things that happened that didn’t work for me and I just said, ‘I need to take some space from this,’” the Days of Our Lives alum explained. “And to be honest, I really like the cast of Vanderpump Rules, I really do like them. But when you get them together, like, it’s a lot. It’s a lot. It’s just a lot and I have to run a company, you know? And, like I said, life’s hard enough as it is and as much as I like them as individuals, being around them is just exhausting.”

While it’s safe to say Valletta won’t appear on the Bravo series in the future — and told Us that he hasn’t watched — he does have a “reality lifestyle” show in the works with his girlfriend.

“It’s different because it’s not based on drama. The drama is based on the situation of building a home,” Valletta said. “And can we do it? I’m really excited to kind of show everybody Rob in love. You know? I feel like I held back on Vanderpump. … I think I held back being emotionally vulnerable in that situation.”

He continued: “Even though I did tell Scheana I loved her and I said it personally, on set, I held back. And so now I think, for the first time, the world gets to kind of see me not holding back. They get to see me, like, genuinely, giddy smiles, in love Rob. It’s fun.”

This Is LA season 3, produced by Circle 8, premieres on KCBS-TV Channel 2 on Sunday, April 21, at 3:30pm PT.

With reporting by Emily Marcus