Colton Underwood has revealed that he had relationships with married men before rising to fame as the Virgin Bachelor.
“To protect myself, I would only hook up with married men. [Married] ‘straight’ men,” the former NFL player explained during his Tuesday appearance on the We Need To Talk podcast.
Underwood noted, “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.”
He went on to share that he did so because he was afraid of being outed as gay, saying, “I was very careful, even when I was physically experimenting with guys and trying to, like, figure myself out.”
“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.
He mentioned, “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.”
To note, Colton Underwood joined Bachelor Nation for Becca Kufrin’s season of The Bachelorette before becoming the Bachelor in 2019.
