Secret Lives of Mormon Wives‘ Taylor Frankie Paul again Dakota Mortensen they have never shied away from confronting their troubled – and often volatile – relationship before their domestic conflict.
Before the show premiered on Hulu in September 2024, Taylor and Dakota began dating after her husband split. Father Paul because of the high shame of “swinging” sex. Taylor and Dakota hit a rough patch in their relationship after being arrested for domestic violence before expanding their family with son Ever in March 2024.
Taylor, on the other hand, expressed her hope that the show will provide more insight into her life outside of prison. The reality star, who also shares children Indy with Ocean and Tate, later admitted she was surprised that season 1 didn’t show Dakota’s “beautiful soft side”.
“I feel like him, that was not shown in the show,” he said Us Weekly at that time. “It was just being defensive. So you’re like, ‘I look like an a-hole** to you when you were pregnant – when that’s just not how I treated you all the time. Yeah, I was holding myself accountable, but not to you.’
After the reality show became a success, Taylor and Dakota went through many breakups and reconciliations. For Dakota, the hardest part was having their issues played out in a public forum.
“I was so afraid of how much I loved Taylor and how much I was afraid of her and knowing that I didn’t really know what she wanted, or if this could be a thing,” she said on “The Viall Files” podcast in June 2025. “I didn’t really want to give her 100 percent of myself because I was afraid of that. I didn’t want that, I wanted that hurt. I’m in.”
The two ended up facing a lot of legal trouble when news broke in March 2026 that Mormon Wives was allegedly halting production on season 5 after Taylor and Dakota were involved in a domestic violence dispute during filming. A spokesperson for the Draper Township Police Department confirmed that there is an open “domestic assault investigation” involving the two.
Keep scrolling for Taylor and Dakota’s most telling quotes about their dynamic:
Protecting Him from the Public Eye
Taylor Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen.
(Photo by Araya Doheny/Getty Images)Dakota Mortensen was Taylor Frankie Paul’s first boyfriend after her divorce Father Paul. After nearly a year of dating, Taylor was arrested in February 2023 for domestic violence. He was eventually charged with aggravated assault, two counts of domestic violence involving a child, aggravated battery with injury to a child and criminal mischief after an incident. Taylor pleaded guilty six months later to aggravated assault, and the other four charges were dismissed with prejudice. He reached an agreement to plead with her the following month.
Dakota told the Daily Mail in an interview at the time that Taylor would never hurt anyone “on purpose,” adding, “She’s a good mom, she’s going through a lot of problems in her life right now. [over] his cheating scandal cost him his marriage.”
He elaborated on the “Viall Files” podcast in June 2025. “That was a really scary thing that night. You want to talk about being, like, in a situation where, ‘What are you doing?’ It was like that,” he recalled. “I took a video because I didn’t know what was going to happen, my truck was in the garage, I couldn’t get out, I tried to walk, it just got worse.”
Dakota said Taylor was “absolutely hammered,” adding, “When we got into the house, it just turned into something really bad.”
Writing Their Highs and Lows
Despite many on-screen battles, Taylor Frankie Paul was confident about the future with Dakota Mortensen, sharing on the first season of Mormon Wives, “Dakota, she was a good partner in this process and very supportive.”
He continued: “I’m like cloud nine, and this is like, this is the first time I’ve ever been so sure about myself in the future. I just—I hope I can trust him.”
At the time, Taylor admitted to us that she was in no rush to get engaged in Dakota.
“I just want to take my time and this time, my second marriage will be very important to me, I don’t want to end up in another divorce situation,” he explained. “So, I just want everything to be really solid and have a foundation of trust. So I feel like that takes time. I’d like that to be the end goal. But right now, I think building myself is where I’m at.”
Watching Their Dynamic Back
“It’s really hard for me to watch it [the ups and downs with me and Dakota] because all such feelings are true. Nothing is built or made or anything. It’s all true,” Taylor Frankie Paul told us in October 2024 after the release of the first season of Mormon Wives. “So it’s hard for me to look back on that. That is probably one of the hardest times.”
Taylor said she wasn’t sure about the status of her relationship with Dakota Mortensen at the time.
“I can say that we are fixing things, but in fact I don’t know where we will go from here. We are not fully united but we are not completely finished yet. I don’t know where the future has put me and him,” he admitted. “It’s just a lot. So I can deal with it and I’m trying to deal with it. But I don’t want to watch the show.”
Dealing With The Reality TV Part Of Their Relationship
“I know a lot of people from a spectator point of view [don’t understand that] broadcasting to the world is so different than just going to someone you care about or your family and telling them something,” Dakota Mortensen explained on the “Viall Files” podcast in June 2025. “Like, you want to talk about fear, that’s the scariest feeling in the world.”
He continued: “After that, you have no control. If they miss something, it’s like it wasn’t meant to be. That was hard for me to understand. That was hard to understand. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be burned to death because of that. I just want to have some time with you where I can talk to you safely.’ But that’s not the case.”
Dakota also reflected on the early days of her relationship with Taylor Frankie Paul.
“Early in the morning I said, ‘What are we?’ Because I just don’t know. And I saw something inside me that liked him. I knew it, and it scared the hell out of me. So there was also that part where I didn’t want him to hurt me,” he explained. “That sad part — I was [the] who hurt him. I think part of that was probably ruining it. I was so scared of how much I loved Taylor and how scared I was of her and knowing that I didn’t really know what she wanted or wanted if this could be a thing. “
Working to Break the Cycle
After several breakups, Taylor Frankie Paul chose to break up with Dakota Mortensen for the 22nd season of The Bachelorette.
“It was hard because, obviously, I’m a part of that — it’s not like I’m pointing the finger like, ‘You’re going [the toxic one.]’ It takes two to tango. We weren’t making progress,” he shared with us in March 2026. “We love each other sometimes, and then we fight. It’s really hard to explain to people, and unless you’ve been in that situation, it’s hard to understand. If I could just snap out of it, trust me, I would. It’s harder said than done.”
When asked what was going on in their relationship, Taylor reflected to Kithi, “Honestly, I think it was a cycle that I’ve been in for a while now, and it’s been really hard to get out of. … It’s been really hard to get out of that.”
Taylor also admitted that she wasn’t sure what to call their relationship at the time.
“I don’t even know if I should keep asking myself that question [about where we stand],” he told us in a cover interview conducted days before the conflict took place in February 2026. “Where do we stand? I don’t know. Ask me tomorrow.”
