Laura Black thought she was about to get married. She reserved her venue, chose a caterer and bought her dress. She wore her engagement ring in photos with her fiancé. They ordered wedding invitations.

And yet, Black felt increasing doubt. She suspected her future spouse wasn't the man she first thought he was. "There was dishonesty on his part and manipulations that I later saw," she said.

Not wanting to hurt his feelings, Black broke off the engagement by saying, "Maybe we can get back together in the future." But she later realized their breakup needed to be a two- or three-part discussion.

"His family was distraught," she said. "I also had to break up with them."

Maren King's gut-wrenching breakup happened with Danny, whom she met in college. "He liked me then, but I wasn't interested in him," she recalls. They reconnected on Facebook after they each divorced. "I was in-between being LDS and not, and he was very not," she said. "He's a fun guy. We started dating. I liked that he was into me while I was also seeing other people at the same time."

After they dated only a few months, Maren became pregnant. "Being 28 years old, you should know better and be smarter, but we weren't," she said. Danny was the one who broke up with her, and she gave up their baby for adoption. "He was the deciding person while I was feeling all of the major life and body changes," she said.

A breakup can be as significant as a divorce, especially in Utah, which places high value on happy families and relationships that work out, says Loni Harmon, who is known as The Dating Counselor.

A Utah-based mental-health counselor for 13 years, Harmon works exclusively with singles. She's seen her clients change their circle of friends and even avoid a particular grocery store to keep from seeing their former significant other. "Even if you see a breakup coming, you still miss the person afterward," she says. "It's called 'the loss of the ideal.' You hoped and prayed and wished that this [relationship] would come together, and now you're grieving the fact that it didn't. Maybe you can't move on from this loss even though you want to."

Starting Over
Black has been on both sides of the breakup equation. Along with breaking up with her fiance', she's also had another man break up with her. "Searching for your life partner—the one who will be best for you—is part of the circle of dating," she said. "Breaking up leaves you with questions, especially if you don't get a lot of clarity from the other person. You question your worth and ask yourself, 'Wasn't I good enough?'"

Black says it took years of hard work and therapy to come to terms with her breakup. The trauma she experienced helped lead her to co-found the Difficult Breakup Support Group with family therapist Kylie Marshall. "There were women of varying ages—from freshmen in college to ladies in their 50s and 60s," Black said.

The group discussed common breakup struggles, whether from a first-time split or a divorce after 30 years. "A lot of our work centered on the idea of complicated grief because this person might still be alive, but you are no longer with them," Marshall said.

Black added, "It feels like a death, because you've lost someone, but lots of times you still have to see them and interact with them. You see what they are doing with their lives."

Especially in Utah, the loss of "what might have been" can feel like a failure, Marshall said. Utahns often marry—and divorce—while still young. Until the split happened, younger members of the support group might think they had arrived by getting married and being on track to start a family. "It becomes dangerous when you attach your whole sense of self to your relationship status," Marshall said. "Shame can enter that feeling of being a failure when it's often not that simple and probably not the case."

Late one night, Kyle Ashworth's wife took his phone to play Candy Crush. Before that moment, she didn't know that she was in a mixed-orientation marriage.

Keeping his homosexual feelings to himself, Ashworth had followed what he felt was the LDS prescription to avoid being gay. "The idea was that a mission, marriage and children will fix you," he said. His marriage had lasted 10 years, he said "without mentioning the unmentionable."

Ashworth kept his secret, but reached out to people he felt might be like him. He wrote to North Star, an organization for practicing Latter-Day Saints who are LGBTQ. That night, when she used his phone, Ashworth's wife found his North Star chats. Waking him, she said, "Apparently, we have something to talk about," Ashworth recalls.

"She knew there was a disconnect," he said. "She thought she wasn't a good enough wife or possibly not a good enough mother." But their relationship wasn't the issue. "[The conflict] was my sexuality— and had nothing to do with her."

Getting Serious
While some people experience several breakups, others never endure one because they hesitate to date or marry. Harmon ("The Dating Counselor") says that many single Utahns struggle to navigate the stages of nontraditional dating. "People want to find the love of their life but want results quickly—with that first swipe or first date," she said, adding that operating quickly when building a relationship is counterintuitive.

Harmon said she sees a lot of "hybrid dating," where one partner demonstrates interest in another but doesn't ask that person on a date. "They show interest whenever it is convenient for them," she said, "or when they want some validation and attention."

Harmon added, "It looks like they're dating, but he hasn't asked her out. It's like they want to find out if this relationship could work before they even go on a date."

Harmon says this behavior is common in the LDS faith, where young men are heavily encouraged to date. "If they don't want to get married yet, hybrid dating at least makes it look like they are making moves in that direction," Harmon said.

But on the other hand, she said, many women still want the validation of an actual date. "They think, 'I must not be good, pretty or smart enough' to be pursued traditionally," Harmon said.

Salt Lake dating and relationship strategist Alisa Snell founded the Lasting Love Academy. She said her consulting work has led to hundreds of marriages, including seven just this past summer. She noted that her 28 years of experience with relationships and dating have led her to believe that, lately, there is more skepticism and indifference toward the idea of getting married.

"In these times, we have a very different society in terms of confidence in marriage," Snell said. She cited Pew statistics indicating that in 1960, 72% of all adults were married, with 28% being divorced, widowed or never married. Seven years ago, in 2015, only 51% of all adults were married.

Snell claimed there is a high rate of people not committing to marriage because of an "avoidant-attachment" style of behavior. Although avoidant partners want to be close to others, they are uncomfortable with too much closeness and keep partners at arm's length.

"Instead of progressing toward marriage, they tend to walk away," Snell said, adding that many of her clients exhibit this behavior. "They have a great relationship, but they just can't commit."

She's seen couples who've dated for two, four, seven and—in one case—11 years without the relationship leading to marriage. In one of Snell's cases, a couple dated for three years, and the man had purchased an engagement ring a year and a half into the relationship. Carrying it around in his pocket, he kept telling himself he planned to propose. "She would break up with him, but he couldn't go ahead without her—and he also couldn't propose to her," Snell said.

She says her job is to help such couples sort out their feelings, weigh the pros and cons and acquire skills to move forward. She said that men and women in equal numbers are avoiding what they should be feeling.

Social Distance
Even in these times of breakups and reluctance to enter relationships, the idea of romantic longing for a special someone still exists. And statistics show that the pandemic could be enhancing this hope for connection.

Nationally, around one in five people reached out to an ex while in quarantine, according to new Kinsey Institute research. Nearly half reached out to multiple exes. While most said they just wanted to check on their former partners, a smaller number admitted to testing the waters for a potential hookup or checking to see if their ex was dating someone new, according to Justin Lehmiller, the study's lead author.

For 10 years after her divorce, Julie Walker was a single mom. While concentrating on raising her children, she went on dates with 200 different men, she said. She also helped her friend, Erin Schurtz—a matchmaker and dating coach with Latter Day Matchmaker—host events where LDS singles could interact.

Walker aged out of the LDS Church's Young Single Adult (YSA) wards, so she began hosting her own events for LDS singles over the age of 31. "I helped plenty of couples meet, even though I hadn't met my 'The One'," Walker said. But then one day, Schurtz told Walker, "I have this guy for you."

In her work, Schurtz continually sees people seeking romance. She agreed that the pandemic likely increased the urgency of such searches. "Before COVID, people approached relationship-finding more casually—[it seemed like] they always had someone to hang out with or go on dates with. They weren't pressed to find a committed relationship," Schurtz said.

Walker's first date with Heber Tuft—the man Schurtz suggested for her—consisted of dessert at Gourmandise. "Even though it was short and sweet, there were sparks and the feeling that we were each impressed by the other person," she said.

Walker learned that Schurtz had arranged the date through her employer, Latter Day Matchmaker. Tuft signed up with the service partly because he is LDS and lives in Louisiana, Walker said. "He'd fly out to Utah on the weekends and take a few girls out," she said.

While she was divorced 10 years and had dated 200 men, he had been divorced for a couple years and dated 50 or 60 women. "The matchmaker made it a little faster," Walker said.

Latter Day Matchmaker schedules an initial meeting with potential clients to get to know them and what they are searching for. "The timing and where they see themselves can determine whether or not we can help them," Schurtz said.

Most of her company's clients are over 30 years old, she noted. Some are even in their 60s and 70s. They typically work with more men than women, she said, and about half of their clients have never been married, while the other half are divorced or widowed.

Schurtz said she asks clients about their preferences in a partner, such as physical appearance, personality and hobbies. And because Latter Day Matchmaker is an overtly LDS-focused agency, most clients are affiliated with the faith. "Almost everyone has a preference about whether their match is active LDS or not," she said, "or temple-worthy or not."

Along with self-matchmaking via the company database, Latter Day Matchmaker clients are encouraged to participate in relationship coaching, Schurtz said. "Everyone can use some improvement," she said. "There could be reasons that are holding them back in committing to a relationship."

One aspect of coaching, called "styling," relates to physical appearance. "We help many men with their appearance and clothes styling," Schurtz said. "Many men don't know how to dress to impress, so they will come across looking their best in a photo."

Walker says that Tuft was one male client who received styling insight—he was advised about his haircut. On their second date, "he said he wanted to focus just on me, for me to be his girlfriend," Walker recalls. Once they told Latter Day Matchmaker that they were dating exclusively, the coaching transitioned to couples' services and advising around how to prepare for combining their families—Walker had two children, and Tuft had four.

Moving On
After Ashworth and his wife filed for divorce, she started dating before he did. Texting him, she wrote, "Last night, I got kissed by a straight guy, and it was amazing. You deserve that, too."

Ashworth said, "After much trepidation, worry and sadness around divorcing, she now realized why I wasn't connecting." While Ashworth describes being gay and trying to love a woman as a monumental task, he has no regrets about the marriage. His four children are the lights of his life, he said.

A critical care flight nurse in Minnesota, Jay Martin, saw an article about Ashworth vacationing in New York with his kids. He also noticed that Ashworth hosts the Latter-Gay Stories podcast. "He stalked me on Facebook and Instagram," Ashworth said. Martin wrote to him, "Any chance you are a gay father?" Martin flew to Utah in October 2019.

"He asked me out to dinner," says Ashworth. And following a date at a 2019 New Year's Eve drag show, Martin said to Ashworth, "I think we need to be a couple."

Ashworth proposed marriage to Martin at the same drag show two years later in 2021 on New Year's Eve. And his former wife married in May 2020. "The two of them, her husband's four children and our four children are now a party of 10," Ashworth said.

Today, the two families ski together, attend family functions, co-parent their children "and still have our separate lives," says Ashworth. "While divorce sucks, and I never met anyone who married intending to divorce, in our experience, it provided us not only closure but allowed us to move on with a better relationship divorced than we had while we were married. "

As Walker and Tuft pursued their long-distance relationship between Louisiana and Utah, Walker felt that Tuft was the man she had waited for all of her life. "He was sweet, happy, kind, and handsome," she said. Truly tipping the scales was her appreciation of what a good dad he was. "When you have kids," she said, "you want to meet someone who understands the 'kids' thing."

Tuft and Walker incorporated their children into a dream wedding. They gave each family member a different colored ribbon. "Each child came up, and they all helped us tie the knot with their portion of the ribbon."

Walker says her former and current husbands have formed a friendship through a lot of co-parenting and vacations. "We involve him as another family member," she said. "Just because things didn't work out with us doesn't mean we can't help each other stay involved in our children's lives."

There were challenging moments after Black's broken engagement in 2015. She met with a therapist certified in trauma therapy. "Before I could move forward, there was a lot of learning about how to trust myself and my decisions along with becoming able to trust someone else," she said.

Now a mental health professional herself, Black met her current husband, Austin Black, in seventh grade. They were good friends who became reacquainted between 2017 and 2019. "He started dating another girl at the end of 2018. It was looking pretty serious," she said. "That's when I realized I had feelings for him. It made me wish I could have taken my chance earlier."

After Austin became single again, they dated, became engaged and married in July 2019. "Austin has been the perfect partner, especially at the beginning when I had hurdles to overcome," says Black. "I was able to be open with him. While we don't always share the same perspective, we can agree to disagree. He respects my opinions."

As for Maren King, after her break up with Danny, she consulted with a social worker and placed her baby for adoption. "Danny didn't have what I wanted in a long-term relationship," she said. "He wanted to be single forever, and I wanted a family." During her divorced years, she said she dated some dirtbags, "but it got better and better."

A year after the adoption placement, she caught sight of a man at work named Joey. "He's really cute," she told a friend. As they became acquainted, she couldn't believe how much they had in common. Joey liked the outdoors, hunting and country music. "I didn't think this existed," she remembers thinking.

She continued in therapy during their relationship. Her therapist said that "I am a typical woman with emotions as deep as the ocean," King said. "His emotions are like a little puddle on the street, but our relationship has worked out."

The couple married and had a daughter. Today, as a birth mom, King interacts with her adopted son about every three months. She says Joey fits in well with all of her family. "He's a good man who doesn't need religion to guide him. He is kind and caring," she said. Love, King said, is better the second time around.

Although it's possible to break up with someone and start swiping an app again that same night, Harmon says it's appropriate to give it some time to settle. "You are worthy of love and belonging," she said, "precisely as you are today."

Still, Harmon said, "It's crucial to develop insights about why being you is more challenging than it needs to be. Consider what you contributed—if anything—to the divorce or breakup."

To some degree, Harmon said, both partners contribute to the failure of any relationship. "My philosophy is that dating isn't a game, but a strategy that we need to learn," she said. "Ask yourself who you would be suitable for and who would be good for you. There is a lot of information and resources to learn from—both self-help and therapy—so that you can rebound and be healthy again."