David Archuleta reveals he was engaged 3 times before coming out as queer
David Archuleta opened up about how he got engaged to women thrice before he came out as queer.
The singer-songwriter talked about how tough it was to admit his sexuality while in the Curch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormon Church, during his Sept. 19 appearance on The Zach Sang Show.
Archuleta grew up in Utah as a devout member of the religion, which forbids same-sex relationships.
“I thought, ‘Oh, there’s something clearly wrong with me that I just need to fix.’ I just thought God has a solution to all things,” Archuleta, who rose to fame at 16 in 2008 as a runner-up on American Idol Season 7, said during the podcast. “So I was trying to follow my beliefs and my religion, [in] which the next step was to get married and have a family.”
After discussing his sexuality with “close people,” Archuleta followed through with what his religion dictated, got into relationships with women, and subsequently got engaged three times to three different women.
It was his faith, he said, that prompted Archuleta to pop the question.
“Mormons get engaged really fast because you’re supposed to get married. And you’re not supposed to do anything before marriage,” he said. “So naturally, those impulses and those urges lead to ‘Let’s get married fast because we’re feeling a lot of urges.’”
The hitmaker admitted that he was just following what the Mormon Church preached, which is that “if you get married, God will bless you."
"And so I thought by doing that, I will naturally fall more and more in love with my girlfriend, and I’ll have enough faith where this won’t be an issue," he said.
But it wasn't to be.
After three broken engagements, Archuleta revealed that he felt grateful none of them pushed through. “I feel like these girls deserve better than this,” Archuleta said. “And if you talk to my exes, they’ll tell you it was rough.”
With the last engagement, he recalled having anxiety attacks while with his then-fiancée because he was “trying to force intimacy with someone that you’re not able to experience,” Archuleta said to People. “I didn’t want to accept that I was into guys.”
Soon after, Archuleta came out and announced, in June 2021, that he is queer.
He recently released a new EP, “Earthly Delights.”
