Getting candid.

Bachelor Nation first met Colton Underwood on Season 14 of "The Bachelorette" and again on Season 5 of "Bachelor in Paradise" before he was named the Season 23 Bachelor.

After his time on the Bachelor Nation shows, Colton came out as gay and married his now-husband Jordan Brown in May 2023. The couple welcomed their son Bishop in September 2024.

The former Bachelor has previously opened up about his coming-out journey and explained how his virginity became a defense mechanism for his sexuality while he was still dating women.

And now on a recent podcast, Colton revealed that he had hooked up with married men before his time on “The Bachelor.” 

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

He continued, revealing, “To protect myself, 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.”

Colton went on, explaining, “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… 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.” Clarifying, he also added, “When I say ‘hookups,’ not sex… I want to make that very clear that I did not have sex with a man, prior to that.”

Colton then looked back on his time on the Bachelor Nation shows and expressed that he wished he had been more open about his sexuality. 

“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,” he shared. “I think there could have been something just interesting in that conversation.”

He recalled, “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… I literally told them I was a virgin on night one of ‘The Bachelorette.’”

He added, “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.”