Colton Underwood Admits He Hooked Up With Married Men Before Going Along With 'The Virgin' Bachelor Nickname!

When fans met Colton Underwood years ago, he was labeled the first “Virgin Bachelor.” But it turns out that wasn’t true!

During an episode of the We Need to Talk podcast on Tuesday, the 34-year-old former football player opened up about how he navigated his sexuality before he publicly came out as gay in 2021. Colton explained that he went to great lengths to hide his secret while experimenting with men, to the point where he decided to only hook up with married guys:

“I was very careful, even when I was physically experimenting with guys and trying to, like, figure myself out. I was so careful on how I did everything. To protect myself, I would only hook up with married men. [Married] ‘straight’ men. So that was sort of my rule that I would never break. When I was in the closet, that would be the only time I would ever hook up with men was if they were married … because they had more to lose than I did.”

To him, hooking up with married men meant they couldn’t “ruin his career” because they “had a whole family that they’d be risking as well.” He added:

“So it’s a messed up thing to think through, but like, it was a form of self-[preservation] … it was just like a way to protect myself.”

And he continued to protect himself when he joined the reality TV world…

Colton got cast on Season 14 of The Bachelorette, where he placed in fourth when vying for Becca Kufrin’s heart. He then became the lead of The Bachelor in 2019, where he ended up with now ex-girlfriend Cassie Randolph. Throughout his run in the franchise, he became known as “The Virgin Bachelor,” a storyline he “hated” because he didn’t want anyone to push and find out he had hooked up with men before:

“I remember I always got asked why I was a virgin. So that was the storyline that they wanted to run with, and I hated it ’cause I didn’t want that pressure, and then I also didn’t want people digging in, because at that time, I had hooked up with men.”

The television personality ultimately went along with the nickname, but he insisted he never planned for his virginity to become a main storyline:

“I went into it like, my whole heart was like I’m not going to disclose to them that I’m a virgin no matter what. I literally told them I was a virgin on night one of The Bachelorette. I opened it up immediately, and I just gave them everything which they loved. So that’s unfortunately how it sort of came to be, and then it became my entire storyline. There were so many reasons why I was a virgin. Like, it was my faith. Obviously, the one that I didn’t tell publicly was my struggle with my sexuality.”

At the time, Colton also thought he could change his sexuality if he slept with a woman for the first time:

“’I think I need to try this … or maybe if I have sex with a girl I will become straight.’ I just was so good at convincing myself that the next step I will become straight. I need to get engaged. I need to get married. I need to lose my virginity. All of these different things were sort of steps to becoming straight. What I was telling myself is, ‘This is going to force me [to be straight].’ I’m going to be so publicly straight that I will never be able to be gay again.”

Ultimately, Colton wishes he “would have been a little bit more vulnerable about just talking about my struggle with my sexuality.” He continued: