The Virgin Bachelor's Secret: Why Colton Underwood Only Hooked Up With Married Men

Before Colton Underwood became“The Virgin Bachelor,”he was living a carefully calculated double life—one that required a strategy most people wouldn’t think to adopt. During a recent appearance on the“We Need to Talk”podcast on Tuesday, June 16, the 34-year-old former NFL player revealed just how deliberate his approach to self-protection was during his closeted years.

Underwood’s logic was stark and pragmatic. When he was exploring his sexuality before coming out as gay in 2021, he made one unwavering rule: he would only hook up with married men. His reasoning? They had far more to lose than he did. A married man risking exposure carried the weight of a family, a spouse, a whole life that could unravel. That mutual vulnerability became, in his mind, a safeguard.“So it’s a messed up thing to think through, but like, it was a form of self-[preservation],”Underwood acknowledged. It’s a window into the kind of calculus that closeted people often have to navigate—the fear, the compartmentalization, the desperate search for situations where silence feels mutually beneficial rather than one-sided.

What makes this revelation particularly striking is the context of his Bachelor era. When Underwood led his own season of The Bachelor in 2019 at age 26, his virginity was the network’s marquee storyline. He was“The Virgin Bachelor,”a marketing angle designed to generate intrigue. But the real story—the one that would have been genuinely interesting—was the one he couldn’t tell: that he was grappling with his sexuality while the entire nation watched and speculated.“I remember I always got asked why I was a virgin,”he recalled.“So that was the story line 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.”

He’s also clarified in previous interviews with Variety that when he says“hookups,”he means physical contact—not sex. But the larger point remains: he was living a lie, and the machinery of reality television was exploiting the very insecurity that made him vulnerable in the first place. He convinced himself that major life milestones would somehow rewrite his identity.“I think I need to try this … or maybe if I have sex with a girl I will become straight,”he remembered thinking.“I just was so good at convincing myself that the next step I will become straight.”

Today, Underwood is married to political strategist Jordan C. Brown-Underwood, and they share a son, Bishop, born in 2024. When he came out publicly in 2021, he told Good Morning America:“I’ve ran from myself for a long time, I’ve hated myself for a long time. I’m gay. I came to terms with that earlier this year, and the next step in all of this was sort of letting people know. … I’m the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been in my life.”Looking back now, he wishes he’d been more vulnerable about his actual struggle instead of letting a manufactured narrative overshadow the truth. Sometimes the most interesting story is the one you’re afraid to tell.