The Bachelor alum Colton Underwood opened up his life to the public when he decided to appear on reality TV, but he's drawing the line at "inappropriate" questions from fans about his sex life.
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Colton, 29, conducted a Q&A with his followers Sunday on Instagram and ranted about an intrusive question asking the former pro football player how many men he has hooked up with, according to Us Weekly.
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"Let me vent for a second. Questions like this are inappropriate," Colton wrote on his Instagram Stories after sharing the question.
"I understand you might know me from The Bachelor where I shared a lot about my personal life. I have set boundaries and I'm respecting myself in a way that will lead me to a healthier life."
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Colton starred on The Bachelor's 23rd season in 2019 after failing to win Becca Kufrin's heart on The Bachelorette's fourteenth edition.
After coming out as gay in an April interview on Good Morning America, Colton revealed to Variety he had experimented sexually with men prior to appearing on The Bachelorette in 2018.
"I'll say this: I was 'The Virgin Bachelor,' but I did experiment with men prior to being on The Bachelorette," Colton said, before disclosing he had a few sexual encounters with men when he was in his twenties but never had sex with a man or woman prior to his time on The Bachelor franchise.
"When I say 'hookups,' not sex," confirmed Colton, who had met these men under a false name in 2016 or 2017 through a dating app called Grindr. "I want to make that very clear that I did not have sex with a man, prior to that."
Colton's prior "Virgin Bachelor" label resulted in fans anticipating his Fantasy-Suite decisions and wondering if he was going to have sex with his winner, who ended up being Cassie Randolph.
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But Colton apparently wants to maintain some privacy in his life now that he's an openly-gay man.
"I never asked to be labeled as the virgin bachelor and have people feel the security to ask me questions about my sex life," Colton reportedly explained.
"It just happened and during that time I thought I had no other choice but to just go with it or the network would be mad. I know differently now. I'll share what I want and this won't be one of those things."
Colton, however, is currently filming a docu-reality series for Netflix that will follow his journey as a proud gay man after being in the closet since high school.
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Colton reportedly teased in his Q&A that the series will show him coming out to his parents and is scheduled to premiere this fall.
Once Colton found fame on reality TV, he told Variety that he constantly worried about being "outed" by one of the men he had hooked up with. Colton feared being exposed and seeing his long-kept secret sold to the tabloids.
"I remember feeling so guilty, like 'What the hell am I doing?'" Colton recalled of his gay encounters.
"It was my first time letting myself even go there, so much so that I was like, 'I need The Bachelorette in my life, so I could be straight.'"
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Colton, who is currently single and no longer on the dating app, called himself "a miserable person living as a shell of a human being" while pretending to be straight for well over a decade.
Colton's ex Cassie, for example, had no idea Colton was gay during their entire year-and-a-half long relationship and only learned his sexual orientation when The Bachelor star came out publicly, according to People.
Colton said around the time of his May 2020 breakup from Cassie -- who has since moved on with new boyfriend Brighton Reinhardt -- a person blackmailed him after he visited a spa in Los Angeles known for catering to gay clients.
Colton told Variety he went to the spa "just to look" and subsequently received an anonymous email from a person claiming to have taken nude photos of Colton at the location.
Colton said he was never shown the alleged photos and "should have never been there" at the spa to begin with.
The unidentified blackmailer reportedly threatened to "out" Colton in the press, and so a panicked Colton reached out to his publicist for guidance and support.
Colton has said in the press he went through a very dark time following his split with Cassie and even attempted suicide one evening.
Colton shared with GMA co-host Robin Roberts last month, however, that after hating himself for a long time, he finally accepted his sexuality earlier this year and has never been happier or healthier.
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