Colton Underwood Says He ‘Hooked Up’ with Married Men Before Being Labeled the ‘Virgin Bachelor’

NEED TO KNOW

• Colton Underwood explained why he only hooked up with married men before coming out

• The former Bachelor star revealed he kept friends from different parts of his life separate to avoid questions about his sexuality

• Underwood said he hated being labeled the “Virgin Bachelor” because he feared people would dig into his private life

Colton Underwood is opening up about the lengths he went to protect his secret before coming out publicly.

The former Bachelor star, 34, reflected on navigating his sexuality while living in fear that someone would expose him, during an appearance on the We Need to Talk podcast, released Tuesday, June 16.

“I was very careful, even when I was physically experimenting with guys and trying to, like, figure myself out,” Underwood said. “I was so careful on how I did everything.”

That caution extended to who he chose to be involved with.

“To protect myself, I would only hook up with married men,” he explained. “[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.”

“So if they tried to, you know, ruin my career and my life for football, they had a whole family that they’d be risking as well,” Underwood continued. “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.”

The former NFL player later entered Bachelor Nation on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette before becoming the lead of The Bachelor at age 26 in 2019.

“Oh, I mean like looking back on it now, I wish I would have been a little bit more vulnerable about just talking about my struggle with my sexuality,” Underwood said on the podcast. “I think there could have been something just interesting in that conversation.”

“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,” he said.

Underwood also doubled down that he never intended for his virginity to become such a central focus of his story.

“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,” he recalled. “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,” he continued. “So that’s unfortunately how it sort of came to be, and then it became my entire storyline.”

The former football player explained that his religious upbringing and internal struggle with his sexuality both contributed to his decision to remain a virgin.

“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,” he said.

He also admitted that for years, he had convinced himself that certain milestones would somehow change who he was.

“’I think I need to try this … or maybe if I have sex with a girl I will become straight,’ ” Underwood recalled telling himself. “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.”

When he accepted the role of The Bachelor, Underwood said he viewed it as another attempt to “force” himself down that path.

“What I was telling myself is, ‘this is going to force me [to be straight],’ ” he said. “I’m going to be so publicly straight that I will never be able to be gay again.”

Underwood publicly came out as gay in 2021. He is now married to political strategist Jordan C. Brown-Underwood.

His latest comments expand on remarks he previously made in a 2021 interview with Variety, when he revealed that he had “experiment[ed] with men” before appearing on The Bachelorette.

“When I say ‘hookups,’ not sex,” Underwood clarified. “I want to make that very clear that I did not have sex with a man, prior to that.”

At the time, Underwood said he often worried someone he had been involved with would come forward publicly.

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“I remember feeling so guilty, like, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ ” he told the outlet. “It was my first time letting myself even go there, so much so that I was like, ‘I need The Bachelorette in my life, so I could be straight.’ ”

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