She walked into *The Bachelor* mansion carrying a promise ring and a reputation. Madi Prewett was the girl who waited. The youth leader. The one who told Peter Weber that intimacy could wait until forever.
But for more than a decade before America ever saw that ring on her finger, Madi was fighting a war nobody knew about—and the battlefield was her own laptop screen.
This week, the 29-year-old mother and former Bachelor Nation favorite sat down with Candace Cameron Bure and did something she once thought impossible. She opened the door to the room she'd kept locked since she was 13 years old.
The Double Life Begins
It started, as it often does, innocently enough. A friend. A screen. A curious click.
Around age 13 or 14, Madi was introduced to pornography by a peer. What followed wasn't a single mistake—it was a decade-long tug-of-war between the girl leading Bible study and the girl alone in her room, trapped in what she now calls "constant secret sexual sin."
On the outside, the architecture of purity was immaculate. She had her virginity card. She was saving herself for marriage. She was following God. Her parents weren't worried. Her youth group admired her. Her future husband, wherever he was, probably imagined her as untouched by any of this.
But behind the closed bedroom door? A different movie was playing—literally.
"I lived my life very much in this 'I'm saving myself for marriage' identity," she confessed. "But behind closed doors I was living this double life."
The Shame Spiral
Here's what Madi describes so painfully well: the gap between who you are and who you think you're supposed to be is a haunted house. And shame is the ghost that lives in every room.
She didn't tell anyone. Not her parents. Not her small group leaders. Not the girl sitting next to her at church camp. Because how do you raise your hand and say, *"I just spent two hours watching things I can't unsee, and now I'm going to pray"*?
So she buried it. And the burial only fertilized it.
"Sin and shame," she calls the cycle. Sin, shame, hide, repeat. The addiction grew roots. The silence became a second skin.
The Confession That Changed Everything
It wasn't until college that the dam finally cracked. Madi did the one thing her addiction had trained her not to do: she told somebody.
She confessed—actually confessed, out loud, to a friend's face—the full weight of what she'd been carrying since middle school.
"And I got free from it," she said simply. "I was able to break free from that addiction and that cycle."
She describes the aftermath as physical. "Immediately I felt lighter. I felt freer. It was the opposite of the lies that Satan was whispering in my mind."
That was 10 years ago. This June, Madi quietly marked a decade of freedom from pornography and masturbation—a milestone she's now willing to name publicly.
The Daily Choice
Here's where Madi's story refuses to wrap up in a tidy bow.
She's been married to Grant Troutt since 2022. They have a 13-month-old daughter named Hosanna. By every external measure, the girl who once hid her screen history is living the life her 14-year-old self prayed for.
But healing isn't linear, and it isn't a diploma.
"It's still a choice for me every single day, even as a married woman, to not return back to the past of my sexual sin addictions," she admitted. "It's still a choice every single day for me not to choose to lust after things that I see online or to give into a feeling that arises."
This is the part of the testimony that doesn't fit on a purity ring brochure. The battle doesn't end when you say "I do." The algorithms don't stop tracking you. The cravings don't automatically rewire themselves at the altar.
"I will not be mastered by my cravings," she said. Not *I was never mastered*. Not *I am no longer tempted*. Just: *I will not be mastered.*
There's a difference between claiming victory and claiming armistice. Madi Prewett Troutt is living in the latter—and she wants you to know that's still a win.
What We Get Wrong About Purity Culture
Madi's story isn't an indictment of faith. It's an indictment of silence.
For years, the evangelical subculture that raised her preached abstinence but didn't always leave room for the messy middle. You were either pure or you were fallen. You either had your virginity card or you'd lost it. There wasn't much language for the girl who was technically "saving herself" while navigating a decade-long private relationship with pixels.
Madi isn't blaming her upbringing. She's simply illuminating what happened in the gap between the teaching and the lived experience of a teenager with Wi-Fi access and nobody to tell.
The Takeaway
At 29, Madi Prewett Troutt has finally done what she couldn't do at 15: she's stopped pretending the struggle never happened.
She's not advocating for pornography. She's not waving a flag for masturbation. She's simply standing in the light—after 10 years of freedom, after marriage, after motherhood—and saying: *I was there. I got out. I'm still choosing every day not to go back.*
For anyone still hiding their search history, still praying the shame away, still perfecting their double life:
The door opens outward. And apparently, it's lighter on the other side.
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