Why Taylor Frankie Paul Broke Up With Bachelorette Fiancé Doug Mason
"I think I'm going to be hated by Bachelor Nation, for sure."
We may never get to see what went down on Taylor Frankie Paul’s cancelled Bachelorette season, but it sounds like the juiciest drama happened in the weeks after the dating series ended. It had already been widely rumored that Taylor ended up with San Diego lifeguard Doug Mason as her winner, and she later confirmed she got engaged to Doug in the lead-up to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season 5. And now that the new season of Mormon Wives is out, Taylor is spilling all the details about how that engagement quickly crumbled — and yes, it involves Dakota Mortensen... as well as an unexpected third love interest.
In Season 5 of Mormon Wives, Taylor informs MomTok that she said yes to Doug’s proposal at the end of The Bachelorette, which is not exactly met with enthusiasm by the group, who questioned Doug’s intentions and compared him to Taylor’s ex, Dakota. But apparently, nobody compared to the actual Dakota for Taylor. The docuseries showed that Taylor reunited with Dakota right after returning from Los Angeles, as the newly engaged Mormon Wives star admitted she slept with Dakota after getting back home to Utah.
In the aftermath of this cheating scandal, Taylor expressed her resistance to tell Doug or the Bachelorette producers that she had started having sex with Dakota again. Even worse, Taylor filled MomTok in on another man she was interested in pursuing: a TikTok musician named Ben Lambert whom she met right before leaving for The Bachelorette.
As Taylor struggled with how to relay all of this to her new fiancé Doug (as well as the rest of the world), she voiced her concerns about dealing with an audience that expected her to be “America’s sweetheart.”
"I'm going to get annihilated by everyone. This is horrible, horrible to be admitting out loud," Taylor said. "I think I'm going to be hated by Bachelor Nation, for sure"
Taylor didn’t shoulder all the blame, though. She also revealed that Doug had become distant after his proposal, asking for a short break to their relationship after the show and communicating in more of a business-professional tone rather than a romantic one. Taylor said that after their first private meet-up as an engaged couple, she began to feel he may have used the show to help launch his music career, and ended the relationship shortly afterwards.
