Taylor Frankie Paul confessed on camera to sleeping with her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen while she was still engaged to her “Bachelorette” winner.
The “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star, 30, made the admission during Thursday’s Season 5 premiere, which was filmed in January. In a confessional, Paul described how she came home from filming the ABC reality show and immediately resumed contact with Mortensen, with whom she shares 2-year-old son Ever.
“So yes. I came home from ‘The Bachelorette.’ Night of, [Dakota and I] were texting, he was like, ‘When are you coming home?'” Paul recounted in the episode. She explained that the initial communication centered on co-parenting arrangements for their toddler.
The conversation escalated quickly. “And then I don’t know how it got to the point of like, yeah, he came over to my house and … it was late,” she continued. Paul confirmed she had been sleeping with Mortensen since returning from the show, despite accepting a marriage proposal from Doug Mason on the “Bachelorette” finale.
“This is so bad,” she said in the confessional.
Paul framed her ongoing attachment to Mortensen in stark terms. “The fact that I am engaged to Doug, that is where, I think, things get a little trickier, because I still have feelings [for Mortensen],” she said. “I’m gonna use an analogy here because this is the best way I can describe it. When you have an addiction, there’s not a lot of things that are more powerful than that drug.”
The premiere captured the volatile dynamic in real time when Mortensen showed up unannounced at Paul’s house as she was preparing for bed. “How are you?” he asked. Paul responded, “I was tired, but I guess I just got a shock of adrenaline a little bit. You kinda just woke me up. You know, that’s really how we work.”
The encounter soured rapidly. The on-again, off-again pair fought over who Mortensen had been seeing during Paul’s absence filming the ABC series, and he stormed out of her house.
Paul offered a raw explanation for her continued involvement with Mortensen. “I don’t want a complicated life, but it’s all I know,” she said in a confessional. “Chaos has been so heightened for the past few years and it’s like all I know. It’s so normal to me. I think it’s stemming from nothing but pure pain.”
The engagement to Mason collapsed within a month of the Season 5 wrap. Celebrity gossip blogger Reality Steve reported that Paul ended the engagement shortly after filming concluded. The relationship faced additional strain when ABC canceled Paul’s “Bachelorette” season in March before it ever aired, following the leak of a 2023 video showing a domestic incident between Paul and Mortensen.
Production on “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” also halted that same month as officials investigated multiple alleged abuse incidents between Paul and Mortensen. The exes have traded accusations of abuse and remain locked in a custody battle over their son.
Despite the turmoil, Paul and Mason attempted reconciliation in the spring. The pair were “seeing each other” again and “trying to make it work,” a source said in April. The insider added that Paul and Mason “were hanging out recently and want to see if they can get back together and be a couple.”
Mason publicly supported Paul when news of the “Bachelorette” cancellation broke. “In light of everything that’s happened, I’m just sending out prayers to Taylor because that was her moment and her moment was blocked,” Mason wrote on his Instagram Stories. “All we can do right now is just be hopeful,” he added.
The current status of Paul and Mason’s relationship remains unknown. Paul and Mortensen continue their acrimonious legal proceedings and public disputes.
The Season 5 premiere arrives as Paul navigates overlapping personal crises: the canceled ABC season, the suspended Hulu production, ongoing custody litigation, and her documented struggle to detach from Mortensen. Her “addiction” analogy, delivered in the confessional, underscored a pattern she described as self-destructive but inescapable.
Paul’s reality television trajectory has become inseparable from her turbulent romantic life. The “MomTok” influencer parlayed social media fame into the Hulu docuseries, then into the historic “Bachelorette” casting as a single mother, only to see that opportunity unravel amid the resurfaced domestic violence allegations.
The premiere episode’s January timeline places Paul’s confession months before the ABC cancellation and production halt, suggesting the current season will document the buildup to those later developments. Her unguarded on-camera admissions have become a hallmark of the series, even as the legal and professional consequences accumulate.