Becca Tilley Addresses Being a Virgin on ‘The Bachelor’

Becca Tilley, who is engaged to Hayley Kiyoko, recently spoke about her time on The Bachelor. During the April 13 episode of the Her Rich Life podcast, she revealed that she never intended for her virginity to be a storyline on the show, which she was a part of during season 19, when she was 25.

“I didn’t go on wanting to talk about my virginity,” Tilley admitted. “I was never going to talk about it because I didn’t want it to be my storyline. I was like, ‘This is something that I’ve chosen for myself. I don’t need it to be this thing that people have an opinion on.’”

However, it ended up becoming part of her arc when another contestant, Ashley Iaconetti, had admitted to being a virgin herself. “Then, one of the other girls came back from a conversation with him and she was really upset and she’s like, ‘I don’t know how he took it.’ I totally forgot I had a microphone on [and] I had seven cameras on me, and I go, ‘I’m a virgin too.’”

She went on to say, “That became my storyline, and it was a great thing because I feel there were people [watching] that had made the same choice. I wanted them to see that you could be confident and sure and know your worth and make that decision for yourself and that [would] be OK.”

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Tilley admitted that she was a virgin in 2015 mainly due to her religious beliefs. A few years later, in 2022, she came out as queer. This is after she had been dating Kiyoko for several years.

“I was very religious and I really wanted to follow the rules I was taught,” she said. “I think even if there was a part of me that had those feelings for a girl, it was just kind of shut off. I never had the experience of feeling like I was in the closet. I was so shut off to that concept because I liked guys enough that I was, like, ‘This is just what I’m supposed to do.’ … Hayley’s the first girl that I was, like, ‘I want to kiss her.’”