Mixed Faith Marriage Counseling

Yes. A faith transition can be enormously disruptive to a marriage, but having different religious beliefs does not automatically mean your relationship cannot work.

Often, the challenge isn't simply that one person believes and the other doesn't. A change in faith can affect expectations about marriage, parenting, sexuality, family relationships, community, identity, traditions, and what each partner imagined the future would look like.

Mixed-faith marriage counseling can help you understand what the changes mean to each of you, make room for grief and uncertainty on both sides, and figure out how to build a relationship that can hold differences without requiring either person to become someone they aren't.

When one spouse leaves the LDS Church, both partners may experience significant changes, even if only one person's beliefs have shifted.

The partner experiencing the faith transition may be reconsidering beliefs, identity, values, community, family relationships, sexuality, or what they want their life to look like. The believing partner may experience grief, fear, anger, confusion, or a sense that commitments and expectations they built the marriage around have changed.

Neither experience has to cancel out the other. In therapy, we can make room for what the transition means to both of you and work through the practical and emotional questions it creates for your relationship.

That's okay. Mixed-faith marriage counseling doesn't require the believing partner to become less religious or the partner whose beliefs have changed to return to the Church.

You may need to figure out what church attendance looks like, how you'll raise children, what happens around temple worship or religious milestones, how extended family fits into the picture, and what traditions or practices remain part of your family.

The goal isn't to get you to the same place spiritually. It's to help you build a relationship where both people can be honest about what they believe and what matters to them while still making decisions together.

No. But you do need ways to live with meaningful differences without constantly trying to resolve them by getting the other person to change.

Some religious differences can be negotiated fairly easily. Others touch deeply held values, identity, family, sexuality, parenting, or hopes for the future and require much more conversation.

Part of our work may be figuring out which differences actually require a shared decision, which can remain different, and how to stay connected when neither of you can honestly give the other person the answer they wish they would give.

No. I'm not interested in deciding which one of you has the more reasonable belief system or whose faith journey is correct.

I want to understand what each of you is experiencing and what the difference between you is doing inside the relationship. Sometimes I'll challenge the believing partner. Sometimes I'll challenge the partner whose beliefs have changed. Frequently, I'll challenge both of you. 😆

My job is to help you build a relationship that makes room for two real people, not to engineer a particular religious outcome.

Parenting is often one of the biggest questions in a mixed-faith marriage because religious differences suddenly become very concrete when you're deciding what your children will be taught and experience.

You may disagree about church attendance, baptism or other ordinances, religious education, family prayer or scripture study, worthiness expectations, youth activities, sexuality education, or how children are allowed to explore their own beliefs.

Therapy can give you a place to identify what matters most to each of you, separate fears from actual decisions that need to be made, and work toward parenting agreements that both partners can genuinely support.

Absolutely. Changes in religious belief can have a surprisingly large impact on a couple's sexual relationship.

You may find that beliefs about modesty, desire, sexual roles, initiation, pleasure, boundaries, or what sexual activities are acceptable no longer line up the way they once did. Sometimes one partner experiences sexuality very differently after a faith transition while the other still wants their sexual relationship to reflect shared religious values.

I'm both a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, so we can work directly with the sexual relationship rather than treating it as a side issue. The goal isn't to replace one set of sexual values with another. It's to help the two of you talk honestly about what each person believes, wants, doesn't want, and what kind of sexual relationship you can build together.

Yes. While I have extensive experience with LDS couples and LDS faith transitions, mixed-faith relationships aren't limited to Mormonism.

I work with couples navigating differences in religious belief, practice, spirituality, and values from a variety of backgrounds. That can include one religious and one nonreligious partner, partners from different religious traditions, or couples whose beliefs have changed in different directions over time.

The specific religious context matters, but many of the relationship questions are similar: How do we respect each other's beliefs? What do we teach our children? What traditions do we keep? What values do we share? And how do we stay connected when something that once united us no longer does?

Yes. Respecting both partners doesn't mean pretending your differences don't matter or avoiding difficult conversations about religion.

It means I'm not coming into therapy with a predetermined goal that one partner should return to their faith, leave it, become more religious, become less religious, or adopt the other person's beliefs.

We can take your beliefs seriously, including when they are very different from each other, while also looking honestly at how those beliefs and the choices connected to them affect your relationship.

Every couple is different, but common areas include changes in religious belief or practice, church attendance, parenting and raising children, extended family relationships, religious traditions and milestones, sexuality and sexual values, gender expectations, finances and religious giving, community and belonging, and uncertainty about the future.

We may also work on the same things that bring other couples to therapy: communication, recurring conflict, resentment, emotional or sexual disconnection, difficulty making decisions together, and rebuilding friendship and intimacy.

The difference is that we don't have to strip the religious context out of those conversations. If faith is part of why something matters, it belongs in the room.

Yes. You don't need to arrive with a shared vision for what your mixed-faith marriage is supposed to look like.

Sometimes couples come to therapy precisely because they don't know what happens next. One person's beliefs may still be changing. The other may be trying to understand what those changes mean for them. Both partners may be grieving parts of the future they expected while not yet knowing what they want to build instead.

We can work with that uncertainty rather than forcing a premature answer. The goal is to help you communicate more honestly, understand what matters to each of you, and make decisions as they actually need to be made.