He’s no saint! The Bachelorette’s Mike Planeta got candid about his sexual experiences after his virginity became a big story line on season 17 of the ABC series.
“I am not some perfect little, like, you know, golden boy,” Mike, 31, said on the Tuesday, July 20, episode of the “Talking It Out” podcast. “Dude, I am a very flawed human being. Like, I am extremely flawed.”
The former baseball player, who was eliminated from the reality series after his first one-on-one date with Katie Thurston during the Monday, July 19, episode, explained that he has done some things in the bedroom, but not sex.
“I’m very open about this: I may not have had, like, sex, sex, but I’ve slipped up and I’ve had oral sex,” he confessed. “For me, that was one of the moments where, like, the two times I did slip up and do those things, those were things that taught me actually the significance of why I actually was putting sex on such a pedestal.”
The California native explained that sex is “a bonding thing, it’s a connection thing, like, it can mask a lot of issues if you’re not communicating and talking about a lot of these things.”
He noted that although he is saving himself for marriage, he is “an extremely sexual dude” and wouldn’t call himself a “saint.” The TV personality added that doesn’t think there should be such a “stigma” toward people who are choosing to wait.
“When people think of somebody waiting, right, they think like, [they’re a] prude or they’re not interested in sex or they don’t want to have these things,” Mike said. “No, like, I have all these urges probably times 10, right? These are urges that I, like, fight every single day but it’s not about me.”
He said that having sex for the first time with his wife is “the right context” for him to fully give himself to someone, adding that his faith “allows me to take a step back” and think about how sex doesn’t just impact him, but how it affects the woman he is interested in.
Last month, Mike commented on why he’s remained committed to staying a virgin while appearing on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast.
“If you truly are convicted in something like this — and for me, I’m convicted, because I told Katie this and she started laughing, [but] I believe wholeheartedly God grabs the most rotten ones the earliest,” Mike told the podcast cohosts Becca Kufrin and Tayshia Adams in June. “I was one of the most rotten ones when I was born. [God] was like, ‘You do not get to experience a lot of these things because you’re going to get in trouble.’”
The former athlete explained that his abstinence has positively affected his ability to love someone, despite what some people may think.
“One of the biggest desires in my heart is, obviously, to have sex, you know, with my wife. It’s like, ’Ok, well, then you need to put in work before you’re granted that gift.’ Right? So that’s how I view it,” he said. “If you’re a man and that’s something that you’re struggling with, or you’re feeling insecure about owning it but you’re doing it for a reason, you’re convicted … for a reason.”
The Bachelorette airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
