Colton Underwood has detailed how he hid that he was gay before he signed up to date dozens of women on The Bachelor.
The former NFL player, 34, opened up about his sexuality on Tuesday’s episode of the We Need to Talk podcast and explained that he was terrified of being outed before he was ready.
Underwood added that he would only have sex with married men, because “they had more to lose than I did.”
“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.”
He continued: “The only way that I could think of to protect myself, is 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.”
“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 said. “So it’s a messed up thing to think through, but it was for me, a way to protect myself and just sort of assured that things wouldn’t get outside of my control.”
Underwood was signed to the San Diego Chargers in 2014 as an outside linebacker and played with the practice squad for nearly two seasons. He also spent time on the practice squads for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Oakland Raiders before being released in 2016.
He went on to become a reality star as a contestant on Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette, which led to him becoming the lead of The Bachelor in 2019, when he was 26 — and one of the main storylines of Underwood’s season was about his claim that he was a virgin.
“I remember I always got asked why I was a virgin,” Underwood said on the podcast. “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.”
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He added that he remained a virgin because of his struggle with his sexuality as well as his religion. However, Underwood said he believed that losing his virginity would suddenly make him attracted to women.
“Maybe if I have sex with a girl I will become straight,” he 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.”
Underwood came out as gay in 2021. He married political strategist Jordan C. Brown in 2023 and welcomed their first child via surrogate in 2024.
