Liv & Matt
Liv & matt
salt lake city, utah
liv Age 36 & matt Age 35
married six years
Arrangement: Mixed-Religion, Mixed Orientation + Mixed Ethnicity Relationship
Imagine meeting someone on a straight, Mormon dating app. You go on a first date. You talk about values, family, and the future. It’s going well, and then she says, “By the way, I’m gay.” Not everyone would stay. Matt did.
Liv and Matt met in 2018 on a Mormon dating app while both were actively participating in the LDS Church. On their very first date, Liv was upfront about who she was, explaining that she is bisexual and attracted to both men and women. It wasn’t framed as a challenge or a confession—just honesty. Matt listened, asked questions, and didn’t flinch. What mattered to him wasn’t a label; it was how Liv made him feel: seen, loved, and understood. That moment became the foundation of their relationship.
They married in 2019 and began building a life together rooted in communication, transparency, and commitment. Liv considers herself bisexual and attracted to both men and women. Matt is heterosexual. They are in a closed, monogamous marriage. Today, they’re raising two young children, navigating work, parenting, and the ongoing medical needs of their youngest child, who was born with a kidney condition that requires frequent therapies and doctor visits. Their days are busy, imperfect, and full in the way real marriages are.
Liv has friends who are gay. She goes to gay bars, attends Pride events, and is still able to express herself and her attraction to women she simply isn’t acting on it. If she does feel attracted to a woman and emotions come up, she communicates those feelings to Matt, especially if she worries they could threaten or damage their relationship. It’s tricky, but it’s important for the health of their marriage.
From the outside, their marriage looks steady and intentional. And it is. But it’s also a contradiction. Matt comes from a deeply Mormon family. His parents and close relatives are leaders within the church, and faith has always been central to his identity. Matt remains active and practicing. Liv’s relationship to faith, however, is shifting.
For Liv, faith has never been simple. She spent years trying to make her identity fit inside the LDS Church, hoping there was room for all of who she is. Over time, that began to feel harder instead of easier. Being Mormon no longer sits comfortably with her, but walking away completely doesn’t feel right either. She’s in the middle of a reckoning, taking space from the church while trying to figure out what faith looks like now, on her own terms. She knows it won’t look the way it once did, she just doesn’t know yet what will replace it.
That difference quietly shows up in everyday life. Matt continues to attend church and finds meaning there. Liv stays home more often, not out of rebellion, but out of uncertainty. Matt takes their oldest child to church. Liv stays home with their youngest.
Liv jokes that they are the ultimate mix: mixed orientation, mixed religion, mixed ethnicity. In many ways, it feels like a match made in a very nontraditional heaven. Definitely not the Mormon type.
TENSION POINTS
Living in that in between space comes with pressure. Matt’s conservative family struggles with Liv’s visibility and her evolving relationship to the church. Liv, meanwhile, often feels isolated from parts of the LGBTQ community that can’t understand why a queer woman would choose to remain in a straight, religious marriage while still questioning her faith. She exists in the middle, belonging fully to neither world.
Faith is where the tension cuts deepest. Within Mormon belief, eternal families are sealed together in the afterlife. Matt believes in that promise. Liv isn’t sure what she believes anymore. The question of what eternity looks like for them, or if they even share the same vision of it, hangs quietly between them.
Parenting makes the stakes real. As their children grow, Liv and Matt are forced to confront how they’ll talk about faith, sexuality, and identity inside their own home. Matt wants to raise their children within the church. Liv wants them to have room to question and choose. They agree on love and protection. They don’t yet agree on spiritual direction.
And then there’s the scrutiny. People are quick to ask how a mixed-orientation marriage works, how intimacy functions, and whether either of them has compromised too much. Liv and Matt know what works for them today, but the pressure to explain and defend their choices only grows as their differences become more visible.
At the heart of it all is a question neither of them can ignore forever: Can two married adults truly function long term when their spiritual beliefs and core values are no longer aligned?
POTENTIAL STORYLINES
Matt’s conservative Mormon family directly confronts him about Liv’s sexuality, her evolving faith, and what kind of example their marriage sets.
Liv continues distancing herself from the LDS Church while actively searching for what faith and spirituality look like for her now, creating tension at home.
Parenting decisions force Liv and Matt to openly debate how they will raise their children around religion, belief, and identity.
Liv explores more of her queer life: going to Salt Lake City Pride, making more queer female friends and going to gay bars.
Liv begins reclaiming parts of life she once avoided, including social drinking, while Matt remains committed to LDS rules around abstinence, forcing the couple to navigate judgment, discomfort, and differing boundaries in everyday situations.