The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives‘ Taylor Frankie Paul and Dakota Mortensen never shied away from addressing their messy — and oftentimes volatile — relationship ahead of their domestic dispute.
Before the show premiered on Hulu in September 2024, Taylor and Dakota started dating following her divorce from husband Tate Paul due to a high-profile “soft swinging” sex scandal. Taylor and Dakota faced ups and downs in their relationship after she was arrested for domestic violence before they expanded their family with son Ever in March 2024.
Taylor, for her part, expressed hope that the show would offer more insight into her life outside of the arrest. The reality star, who also shares kids Indy and Ocean with Tate, later admitted she was surprised that season 1 didn’t show Dakota’s “good soft side.”
“I feel like for him, that wasn’t shown on the show,” she exclusively told Us Weekly at the time. “It did show just defense. So he’s like, ‘I look like this a**hole to you while you’re pregnant — when that’s just not the case of how I treated you the whole time. Yes, I did defend myself in cases, but that’s not how I am to you.’”
After the reality show became a success, Taylor and Dakota went through numerous breakups and reconciliations. For Dakota, the most difficult part was having their issues play out in a public forum.
“I was so afraid of how much I liked Taylor and how afraid I was of her and knowing that I didn’t know really what she wanted, or if this could even be a thing,” he said on “The Viall Files” podcast in June 2025. “I didn’t really necessarily want to give her 100 percent of me because I was afraid of that. I didn’t want to get hurt by that, because that’s how I am. When I’m all in, I’m all in.”
The duo ultimately faced more legal issues when news broke in March 2026 that Mormon Wives allegedly halted production on season 5 after Taylor and Dakota were involved in a domestic violence dispute while filming. A spokesperson for the Draper City Police Department confirmed that there is an open “domestic assault investigation” involving the pair.
Keep scrolling for Taylor and Dakota’s most telling quotes about their dynamic:
Defending Her in the Public Eye
Dakota Mortensen was Taylor Frankie Paul’s first public boyfriend after her divorce from Tate Paul. After nearly one year of dating, Taylor was arrested in February 2023 for domestic violence. She was ultimately charged with aggravated assault, two counts of domestic violence in the presence of a child, child abuse with injury and criminal mischief after the incident. Taylor pleaded guilty six months later to aggravated assault, while the other four charges were dismissed with prejudice. She reached a plea deal the following month.
Dakota told the Daily Mail in an interview at the time that Taylor would never hurt anyone “intentionally,” adding, “She’s a good mom, she’s going through a lot in her life right now. Taylor’s been struggling, it’s been a hard year for her. She is racked with guilt [over] her cheating scandal that cost her her 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 position of, ‘What do you do?’ That’s how it felt,” he recalled. “I did take a video because I didn’t know what was going to happen. My truck was in the garage. I could not leave. I tried to leave. It just was so bad.”
Dakota claimed Taylor was “absolutely hammered,” adding, “The second we walked into the house, essentially it just turned into the most craziest thing ever.”
Documenting Their Highs and Lows
Despite several onscreen fights, Taylor Frankie Paul was confident in a future with Dakota Mortensen, sharing in the first season of Mormon Wives, “Dakota, he was such a good partner in the process and very supportive.”
She continued: “I’m, like, on cloud nine, and this is, like, the first time I’ve been so confident in us, in a future. I just — I hope that I can trust him.”
At the time, Taylor admitted to Us that she was in no rush to get engaged to Dakota.
“I just want to take my time with this time around, this is my second marriage. It is going to be very important to me, and I don’t want to end up in another situation of being divorced,” she explained. “So, I really just want everything to be really solid and have a foundation of trust. And so I feel like that takes time. I would love for that to be the end goal. But right now, I think building it up to that is where I’m at.”
Watching Their Dynamic Back
“It’s really hard for me to watch [the ups and downs with me and Dakota] because it’s all such true feelings. None of it is fabricated or acting or nothing. It’s all real,” Taylor Frankie Paul told Us in October 2024 after the first season of Mormon Wives was released. “So it’s really hard for me to watch that back to that. That’s probably one of the hardest moments.”
Taylor said she wasn’t sure about her relationship status with Dakota Mortensen at the time.
“I would say we’re working on things, and I actually have no idea where it goes with us from here. We are not fully together but not fully done. I don’t know where the future holds with him and I,” she admitted. “It’s just a lot. So I’m coping and trying to cope. But I don’t want to watch the show.”
Dealing With the Reality TV Aspect of Their Relationship
“I know a lot of people from a viewer point of view [don’t understand that] having everything aired out to the world is a lot different than just going to a person 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: “Then doing it with a show, you don’t have any control over it. If they’re missing something, it’s like that’s not how it was. That to me was really hard to grasp. That was hard to understand. I was like, ‘I don’t want to be torched to the world for it. I just want to have a moment with you where I can talk to you. I want a safe place to talk.’ But that’s not the case.”
Dakota also reflected on the early days of his and Taylor Frankie Paul’s relationship.
“Pretty early on I was like, ‘What are we?’ Because I just don’t know. And I could tell something inside of me liked her. I knew it, and it scared me really bad. So there was also that part where I didn’t want her to hurt me,” he explained. “That’s the sad part — I was [the] one that hurt her. I think part of that was maybe me sabotaging it. I was so afraid of how much I liked Taylor and how afraid I was of her and knowing that I didn’t know, really, what she wanted or like if this could even be a thing.”
Working to Break the Cycle
After several breakups, Taylor Frankie Paul chose to cut ties with Dakota Mortensen and went to film season 22 of The Bachelorette.
“It was hard because I’m, obviously, a part of that — it’s not like I am pointing the finger like, ‘He is [the toxic one.]’ It takes two to tango. We were just not progressing,” she shared with Us in March 2026. “We like each other sometimes, and then we fight. It’s really hard to explain to people, and unless you’ve been in that situation, it is hard to understand. If I could just snap out of it, trust me, I would. It’s just a lot harder said than done.”
When asked what was happening in their relationship, Taylor reflected to Us, “Honestly, I think it was just still in the same cycle that I’ve been in for a while now, and it’s been really hard to get out. … It’s been so hard to remove myself from that.”
Taylor also admitted she wasn’t sure what to call their relationship at the time.
“I don’t even know. I have to ask myself that question all the time [about where we stand],” she told Us in a cover story interview conducted days before the dispute took place in February 2026. “Where do we stand? I don’t know. Ask me tomorrow.”
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