Watch: Taylor Frankie Paul Admits to Cheating on Bachelorette’s Doug Mason With Dakota Mortensen
Taylor Frankie Paul is coming clean.
In the very first episode of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives season five, the Hulu star shared major insight into her Bachelorette journey, including what went down with her once-fiancé Doug Mason.
While in conversation with costars Jessi Draper, Mikayla Matthews and Mayci Neeley, Taylor revealed Doug went down on one knee during the Bachelorette finale—and that she said yes.
However, once she got home, she soon reunited with her ex-boyfriend Dakota Mortensen.
“Obviously we’re texting,” Taylor said of communicating with Dakota. “‘When are you coming home? When are you going to be home?’ I don’t know how it led to it, but he came over.”
And after her friends teased her about “not knowing how it happened,” Mayci fills in what happened next: “You sleep with Dakota.”
To which Taylor—who at this time was still engaged to Doug—affirmed, “Yes.”
And when Mayci noted, “So you cheated,” Taylor hedged with, “I don’t like the word cheating.”
Her friends, however, aren’t quite ready to let her get away with it. As Mayci pointed out, “If it was the opposite, you would consider it cheating. You can’t say it’s not.”
Mikayla then asked about Dakota’s then-girlfriend, Emma, and Taylor replied, “It’s not my business.”
E! News has reached out to reps for Dakota for comment but has not yet heard back.
She also revealed, after her friends asked, that she had yet to tell Doug that she and Dakota had slept together.
Meanwhile, in a confessional, Mayci told cameras, “At the end of the day, I feel like we all knew what was gonna happen is that she’s gonna run right back to Dakota, like we’ve seen this film before.”
Mike Baker / The Academy via Getty Images & Doug Mason/Instagram
But apparently Taylor and Dakota’s dalliance wasn’t the only romantically-inclined activity Taylor got up to during her engagement to Doug, as she revealed to her friends, “I’m in love with someone else.”
It doesn’t take long for her friends to guess the mystery man was Ben Lambert, a musician on TikTok Taylor reached out to and met before leaving to film The Bachelorette.
Apparently, Taylor—who is mom to one son with Dakota and two children with ex-husband Tate Paul—and the aspiring musician reconnected shortly after she returned from filming.
“He messaged me, and he was like, ‘Are you married?’” Taylor recalled. “It was a joke. I told him, and we talked for like six hours.”
Jessi then clarified, “So he knows you cheated,” and Taylor confirmed, adding, “Me even telling all of this stuff, like I felt safe to do so.”
Disney/Pamela Littky
And just to make sure everyone is on the same page, Mikayla pointed out, “So you told Ben, but you haven’t even told your fiancé.”
As for her future with the musician, Taylor implied she might like to date him once everything with The Bachelorette is behind her—something her friends try to discourage.
“I think you need to be single, and I think Ben is just another distraction,” Mikayla said, with Jessi adding, “I think there’s a lot of wounds.”
But while Taylor and Ben do reconnect in-person later in season five, they ultimately decide to go their separate ways.
As Taylor tells her mom, “He wants to date. He wants to be exclusive—I don’t. I’m too busy right now.”
As for where the rest of the SLOMW stars are in their love lives? Read on.
TikTok/@taylorfrankiepaul
Dakota Mortensen/Instagram
Tibrina Hobson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Disney/Fred Hayes
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Disney
Instagram/Mayci Neeley
Demi Engemann/Instagram
Mikayla Matthews/Instagram
Layla Taylor/Instagram
Miranda McWhorter/Instagram
For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App
