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When Colton Underwood was announced as the star of ABC’s longest-running reality show, producers dubbed him “the Virgin Bachelor.”
Now we know that title was far from correct.
Sure, Colton was a stranger to the ways of women before his tenure, but it seems he’d been hooking up with a whole lot of guys.
Colton recently opened up about the extreme measures he took to keep his sexuality hidden before he publicly came out as gay in 2021.
During an appearance on the “We Need to Talk” podcast, Colton admitted that he limits his encounters to a very specific group: married men.
“I was very careful even when I was physically experimenting with guys and trying to figure myself out,” Underwood explained, adding:
“I was so careful with how I did everything.”
That caution extended to who he chose to be involved with.
“To protect myself, I would only associate with married men,” he said. (via People).
“(Married) ‘straight’ men. So that was kind of a rule of mine that I would never break. When I was in the closet, the only time I would ever come to men would be if they were married… because they had more to lose than I did.”
According to Underwood, the decision was made out of fear.
“I was very careful,” he said, discussing the years he spent struggling with his sexuality behind closed doors.
Underwood explained that he saw married men as a safer option because they had just as much — if not more — to lose if their interactions became public.
Looking back, Colton acknowledged that mindset was unhealthy.
He described it as a form of self-preservation at a time when he feared his sexuality would be revealed, potentially derailing both his footballing aspirations and his public image.
When he appeared The Bachelor and later became manager of The Bachelor in 2019 his virginity became a big story. At that time, the label followed him everywhere.
Now, Underwood says he hated the attention.
He revealed that he worried that constant questions about his virginity would cause people to dig deeper into his personal life and expose the secret he was desperately trying to keep hidden.
“I was always asked why I was a virgin,” Underwood recalled, explaining that producers embraced the narrative while fearing what further investigation might reveal.
Many social media users expressed sympathy for the fear and pressure he described, while others questioned the ethics of pursuing married men, regardless of the circumstances.
These days, Colton is married to Jordan C. Brown. And in 2024, the couple welcomed their first child.
So the road to happiness may have been a winding road — but at least Colton got there in the end.
