Utah’s LDS vs. non-LDS divide: How it complicates dating, sex and the quest for lasting love

Editor’s note • This is Part 2 of a continuing series on Utah’s religious divide. It focuses on dating. Part 1 examined its impact on neighborhoods, including the effect on children, block parties, even snow shoveling, along with how the pressure to proselytize can impact relationships, why some Utahns simply pack up and leave, and tips for easing the divide.

For centuries, families have had rules about dating and marriage and the expectation, for many, was never to step outside the race, region or religion — or risk dire consequences. Like detachment, disownment, damnation, even death.

Think Harry and Meghan. Romeo and Juliet. The Sharks and the Jets. Ariel and Prince Eric.

While boundary-crossing romances are more common today and often face less resistance, plenty of real and resilient guardrails remain.

It is especially fraught in a place like Utah, dominated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches that the highest heaven requires a marriage, or sealing, to a practicing member of the faith.

So while Latter-day Saint children playing with classmates and neighbors not of their religion is certainly innocent enough, those kids, at some point, grow up. When teens start hanging out and falling for outsiders, the stakes soar. After all, friendships can become crushes. Crushes can become engagements. Engagements can become weddings.

Dating, then, becomes a pinch point in the “Unspoken Divide” between members of the state’s largest faith and their fellow Utahns.

[See how LGBTQ Utahns navigate a complex dating world and forbidden relationships amid the religious divide.]

Will the Latter-day Saint girl, for instance, lose her faith — and her virginity — to the charming atheist or former believer? Will that delightful Protestant boy convert to what his adoring Latter-day Saint girlfriend believes is the one true church? Will the newly returned Latter-day Saint missionary in search of a temple-worthy mate break off his high school romance with a Catholic classmate? Will the lonely Latter-day Saint woman ditch her celestial goal of a husband in heaven in order to be a wife and mom on Earth?

Given the creedal calculus at play amid the state’s religious divide, that dinner downtown, that movie at the Megaplex, that hike in the hills suddenly take on deeper significance as Utahns go looking for love.

Temple or bust

For Kendra Davis, a 34-year-old mechanical engineer living in Salt Lake City, the decision to date within her Latter-day Saint fold wasn’t because she thought it could never work out with someone with a different religious background.

“I knew that, for me,” Davis explained, “my faith was important enough that I wanted to prioritize it and not put temple marriage at risk.”

Such a quest can limit the prospective dating pool, eliminating not only those outside faith but also nonpracticing members within it.

Davis refused to back down from her decision, even when she graduated from Southern Utah University single, a circumstance that she said “shocked” her parents, who met in college. Neither did she relent when faced with pushback from a few of the men she met along the way, including one who, frustrated, insisted to her that he was “a good person.”

It was in that moment, she said, that something “clicked.”

“I was like, ‘Oh, you think I’m judging you,’” she recalled. “But really, for me, it’s like if I want to go to business school, I’m not going to apply to an art school.”

For many Latter-day Saints, this sense of focus grows after their full-time missions.

Dating before one’s proselytizing stint — two years for men starting at age 18; 18 months for women starting at age 19 — is often viewed in the Latter-day Saint context as a kind of practice round in preparation for more serious relationships afterward. That is when the cultural and theological pressure to find a member-spouse begins.

Supporting their efforts are congregations reserved for singles, along with dances, devotionals, even volleyball tournaments. The church also stages large regional gatherings, where thousands of single Latter-day Saints hear sermons, speed-date and swap numbers.

Kristen Jex, a single Latter-day Saint who moved to the area from Idaho a few years ago, was pleasantly surprised by the level of outreach and activity.

“It’s been so fun,” Jex, who is in her 30s, said of the single community in Salt Lake City, “like college.”

Not content with being a passive observer, she helped with a massive Latter-day Saint conference for 500 to 600 midsingle adults.

“I felt this camaraderie,” she recalled. “It’s so great.”

Lynsie Allen, who lives in Virgin, a southern Utah town with under 700 residents, grew less enthused with dating Latter-day Saints as she began exiting the faith.

“When I was Mormon, I was only dating Mormon guys,” Allen said. “That was great at BYU, and it was great in Salt Lake. There were plenty of options. But then I started slowly leaving the church, and it was really difficult.”

Why? “I got rejected so much because I was not Mormon enough for them, and that really frustrated me, because I’m still a great person,” she said. “But they just weren’t interested because I wasn’t the ‘Mormon girl.’”

Geneva Humbert was reared as a Catholic in Salt Lake City but dated two Latter-day Saints while at Highland High and another in college.

Humbert believed a boy she dated for two years of high school was her true love. The teens really connected and even talked about possible marriage after his two-year church mission, including a discussion of when and where.

The happy girlfriend promised to wait for him.

When her boyfriend went to his assigned mission to Mexico, the pair eagerly emailed once a week, but after only a few months, he was sent back to Utah because of COVID-19 to wait for a reassignment.

“He said he loved me,” Humbert recalls, “and still wanted to get married.”

But she said he had changed. No longer the carefree teen she loved, he was socially awkward and talking about religion all the time. He gave her a copy of his missionary photo, with a personal letter about his faith on the back. He wanted to give her a Book of Mormon, the faith’s signature scripture, but she declined.

“He tried to force religious stuff on me,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine being a Mormon.”

He was sent back out again and when he returned, they went on a date, but the differences were too great.

“I told him it was not what I wanted anymore,” she said. “He cried.”

The returned missionary Humbert dated in college made her feel like “a fake,” she said. She had to sneak around to get a drink (Latter-day Saints eschew alcohol as part of their Word of Wisdom health code) and hide her past sexual experience, even though she didn’t feel it was wrong. He tried to give her missionary discussions at his home.

Now 23, Humbert is a flight attendant, has a non-Latter-day Saint boyfriend and said she can finally be herself.

Latter-day Saints need not apply

Some Utahns, on the other hand, have no interest in courting Latter-day Saints.

Such is the case for Taylor Lay, a 20-year-old Utah Valley University student who grew up in Sandy and describes the state’s dating scene in one word: tense.

As a “left-leaning, non-LDS” person in Utah County, Lay said she doesn’t date church members because she feels they don’t share the same values.

“I just don’t believe in going to a specific place to worship a God,” Lay said. “I don’t really believe in organized religion. That’s just not really my thing.”

Though Lay said she admires the church’s focus on togetherness and family, she doesn’t view faith the same way.

“For me, worshipping my God or whatever I believe in is like going on a hike,” she said, “or just being mindful and taking care of myself.”

Young Latter-day Saint men “want a housewife,” Lay added, “and when that doesn’t happen…they are very quick to change their mind.”

Of course, considering the sheer size of Utah’s Latter-day Saint populace, ruling out dating a member can severely shrink the pool of potential partners.

And the Utah County pressure to couple up can be hard to cope with, Lay noted. “Half of my college campus is engaged or married. So why am I not in a serious relationship? I’ve had to correct my brain being like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’”

A point often overlooked is that Latter-day Saints hold a vast spectrum of beliefs and practices. Many members are liberals. Some have no reservations about grabbing a burger and a Coke at a bar. Others drink coffee and love to go out for a meal and a matinee on Sundays.

If you acknowledge you are a member, the potential partner “automatically makes a lot of assumptions about your values, even your political persuasion,” said Kristen Jex, an active Latter-day Saint and clinical mental health counselor in Utah.

There’s too much “binary thinking” about religion, Jex said. “As a counselor, I recognize people use that as a shorthand to convey something about their values/beliefs/experiences and try to resist the temptation to assume where they are coming from.”

To her, an open approach can prove “useful in building any relationship, including dating.”

The sex question

A principal concern for devout Latter-day Saints in dating nonbelievers, Jex said, is sex and how church teachings influence their perspectives.

In its General Handbook, the faith teaches that sex is “ordained of God for the creation of children and for the expression of love between husband and wife.” The means “abstinence from sexual relations outside of a legal marriage between a man and a woman” and total “fidelity” within such a union.

Some who grew up Latter-day Saints but later left believe the church’s emphasis on chastity was, Jex said, “harmful to how they related to their own bodies, which becomes a factor in how they see their bodies and in intimacy.”

Jex left the church for a few years, dated nonmembers and had sex, discovering how “touch and intimacy were important.”

Dating outsiders as a believer “was always hard, though,” she said, “going into a relationship knowing that it’s going to end.”

When Jex returned to the faith, she ran into the lack of understanding of sexuality for older singles.

“I am 36 and still expected to abide by standards set out in ‘For the Strength of Youth’ pamphlet for teens,” she said. “We are not youths, but there is not a clear guideline on how to be chaste as a fully grown adult.”

She wonders: How do these Latter-day Saints keep a sexual identity alive?

Jex watched female friends she had in her 20s in a young single adult ward, or congregation, confront a terrible dilemma: Do I leave the church so I can be partnered with someone or stay in and risk being single forever?

Those who stayed often were “developmentally stunting themselves, waiting on someone else,” she said. “It’s so heartbreaking, so hard. I have no answer. It’s just sad.”

Now Jex has been dating a fellow Latter-day Saint and, to her, it feels more comfortable.

“Spirituality is such a value of mine,” she said, “that I have chosen to stay in at any cost.”

Non-Latter-day Saints interviewed for this story were more or less uniformly opposed to postponing sex until after marriage, worried that doing so could lead to tying the knot with partners they are not ultimately compatible with in the bedroom.

At the same time, Latter-day Saints with experience dating outsiders stressed that it’s wrong to think that all potential partners expect sex right away.

“There’s an idea that any non-Mormon will immediately pressure you for sex, and that’s just not true,” said attorney Carolyn Homer, a Latter-day Saint in Washington, D.C., who married a Catholic after divorcing a fellow member. “And if it is true, dump them.”

Diana Brown, a single Latter-day Saint, agreed, while noting that tension surrounding sex can build as couples extend their relationship.

“A lot of women assume if they date outside the church, they’re going to have sex immediately or they’ll be undateable,” said the 33-year-old, who splits her time between Utah and Washington, D.C. It’s “rarely a short-term issue but a long-term issue.”

Looking beyond the fold

Some Latter-day Saints feel they have little choice but to look beyond the church rolls for love.

Latter-day Saint Jimmy Henderson — who works as a singer, dancer and actor — sees himself as one such misfit.

“A lot of people who are religious, who are in the church, see [his theater work] as kind of a red flag, as far as careers go,” said the Spanish Fork native. “There’s a lot of pressure, especially now that I’m 26.”

Henderson pins much of that on a church culture “that is so intense on pressuring people to get married and guilting people.”

He points to a recent talk that apostle D. Todd Christofferson delivered during October’s General Conference in which the senior leader warned that prioritizing a career at the cost of “legitimate opportunities for marriage” constituted a “form of rebellion.”

Messaging like this, Henderson fears, serves as a warning to Latter-day Saint women that, as someone pursuing an unpredictable and demanding career, “I’m the kind of guy they want to avoid.”

Latter-day Saint men are hardly alone in feeling as though the dynamics within the faith are sometimes less than favorable for spouse-seeking.

Diana Brown co-hosts “The Soloists,” a podcast dedicated to “life at the existentially chaotic intersection of Mormonism and, um, not being married.”

By far the top reason she hears from women for dating outside the church is a sense that there just aren’t enough active, believing men to go around.

“The gender imbalance,” Brown said, echoing Jex, “means it just looks like a dead end to women.”

Swiping for someone who clicks

Those who do venture beyond the fold must immediately contend with a host of complicating factors, starting with how to meet people.

The answer often is dating apps. But which one?

The Mutual app exists with the explicit intent to match Latter-day Saints (although, Kendra Davis, the 34-year-old mechanical engineer, notes that plenty of non-Latter-day Saint men use it to expand their dating options). Choosing a more generic platform like Bumble or Tinder means casting a wider religious net, prompting the question of how and if users communicate their church affiliation in their all-important bios.

Brown has gone back and forth in her profiles about identifying as a Latter-day Saint. She knows listing BYU as her alma mater, for example, will lead many to screen her out. That’s frustrating, but neither does she want to “hide who I am.”

Tom Merrill, a 40-year-old divorced father of two who has been out of the church for close to a decade, said he will sometimes list himself as a social drinker as a nod to his standing outside the dominant religion.

Others, like Holladay resident Kate Wiseman, also a former Latter-day Saint, specifically search for potential partners in Utah who are not religious. That’s how she found her current boyfriend — by using a “not religious” designation on her dating profile.

Wiseman said others like her might not identify with the church or its teachings anymore, but they have still been “shaped by those values.”

“They may not be looking for an ‘eternal partner,’ but they do value monogamy,” the 23-year-old said. “It’s an interesting middle ground of being very shaped and influenced by the way we were brought up, but also rejecting a lot of that as well.”

Meet the worried parents

No matter how open dating has become relative to years past, anxious parents on every side wonder if their offspring will retain their values — and pass along their religious or nonreligious identity.

While many parents don’t care as long as the would-be partner is kind and treats their child well, some see dating within the faith as a deeply held expectation.

“As a Jew, rabbi and father, I hope and pray that my children grow up to marry loving, wonderful partners,” said Rabbi Samuel Spector, leader of Salt Lake City’s Congregation Kol Ami. “At the same time, we see that most interfaith couples do not raise their children Jewish, even though many do.”

He continued: “Like many Jewish parents, it would certainly be my preference that my children marry somebody Jewish with whom they share their faith, heritage and traditions, and pass those on to their children as we have done for thousands of years.”

It is especially crucial, Spector said, for the preservation of Jewish community and culture, even as he recognizes and celebrates interfaith relationships.

For some Latter-day Saint parents, it can be less about this world and more about the next. Would there be an “empty seat” in their family’s highest heaven? These couples may not speak up as their child becomes romantically involved with someone outside the fold, but they may, in fact, be white-knuckling in private.

On the flip side, parents of other Christians or nonbelievers fear that Latter-day Saints use a “flirt to convert” missionary tactic in which they lure unsuspecting partners and then pressure them to convert.

Former Latter-day Saint Tom Merrill, the 40-year-old dad of two, said he is already at work inoculating his 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter against any possible future such attempts by some cute Latter-day Saint classmate or neighbor.

“It gives me anxiety,” the Salt Lake City father said, “to think about some really handsome, charismatic guy making my daughter his pre-mission project.”

Luis Hernandez’s parents, on the other hand, were largely pleased to see him happy when he joined the church while dating a Latter-Saint woman he later married. This was especially true for his mom, whom he described as “a good person, loving and kind.”

Hernandez, who was raised in Salt Lake City, said he sometimes gets comments that suggest that his conversion was less than authentic, a decision based more on his relationship with his now-wife than God.

When this happens, the 33-year-old said he just tells the truth — that he had been praying, reading scriptures and seeking for a faith that would bring him closer to God long before the two started dating.

‘A dangerous path’

When Jeff Combe, reared in one of Salt Lake City’s evangelical Christian churches, finally asked out that cute girl he saw dancing at an East High prom, he didn’t think about religion at all.

But it was definitely on her mind.

Melissa was a Latter-day Saint, who wanted to marry in the temple to a fellow believer. Her parents seemed to like Jeff enough (especially her mom), but she got endless questions from her friends and siblings.

“If you guys keep dating, where will this go?” they quizzed her, “You’re going down a dangerous path.”

So Melissa kept breaking up with Jeff and then getting back with him. Their attraction was undeniable, and their bond was strong.

After about two years of dating, Jeff began to wonder if all the negativity his church had taught him about Mormonism was, well, wrong.

“None of the things my parents told me about the church panned out,” he recalls. “I wanted to explore for myself.”

One night, Melissa gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon, asking him to read it, and Jeff stormed out the door, feeling that she was manipulating him.

Given his parents’ views, he brought it home, never intending to read it. But he was curious. Questions began to pour out of him.

He studied on his own — not wanting to feel that he was joining just for Melissa — and, in January 2008 (four years after they started dating), Jeff was baptized.

He was too scared to tell his parents in person, so he wrote them “a giant letter,” then left to camp with friends in Arches National Park for three days. When he got back, they didn’t say a single word to him (“I could tell there was anger in the air”) but later that night “they launched into me.”

Eighteen months later, Jeff and Melissa married in the Salt Lake Temple and, while his parents were there to celebrate with them on the grounds, as nonmembers they couldn’t go inside.

By then, Jeff said, his folks had gotten to a place where they respected his choice and they loved Melissa — if not her religion.

Correction • Nov. 30, 2024, 11:46 a.m.: This story has been updated to fix a reference to Southern Utah University and the spelling of Taylor Lay’s last name.

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