D’Lite and Myriah
Relationship Status: Married
What’s your sign? August | Virgo and February | Aquarius
Where were you born?: Seattle, Washington and Fort Smith, Arkansas
Where do you live?: Chester, Arkansas
What brought you to Arkansas?:
D’Lite: My parents retired here. They wanted to live farm/country lives so they moved here. I officially joined them in 2018 and started exploring Arkansas.
How do you identify?
D’Lite: I do identify as they/them, but I’m okay with she/her, sometimes people call me sir, but I don’t find it offensive so any pronouns are fine. I identify as myself, queer, first-generation, and Hmong of course.
Myriah: I identify as Queer, she/her or they/them pronouns, I’m still figuring out the gender portion of that, and I am mixed with Philipino, Mexican, White, Native American, and probably a bunch of other stuff. I need to take that 23 and Me test (laughs).
What makes you stay?:
Myriah: We thought it’d be easier here because we have family here that can help us with our son and we wanted to continue our education and have a career to be financially stable.
What are you passionate about?
Myriah: I’m passionate about my family and being able to take care of the ones that I love, and I’m passionate about inspiring other queer people and letting them know it’s possible to have a family and to be yourself and to be happy,
D’Lite: I’m also very passionate about my family. I’m family oriented so that’s very important to me. Family first. I’m also very passionate about music in any way; listening to music, making music with people, talking about music. I think music is love so I’m all for that. I do love art, museums, and seeing other people’s art. I love lifting people up, promoting, and telling [people] their work is great.
How did you meet?: Through a dating app called Tammy in 2021.
What do people think about you that isn’t true?
D’Lite: People have this perspective where people don’t see me as someone who can be committed or faithful to any relationship, but when I’m all in a relationship it is my priority. People have this misunderstanding because I’m so friendly and outgoing that it’s hard, they’re like “How can you be this person but also be this person at the same time,” which I can: I can be friendly, outgoing, have friends and do these things and remain committed and faithful.
Myriah: This really gets on my nerves sometimes just because D’Lite is the more masculine presenting, they see me as this femme, damsel in distress and D’Lite’s saving me and taking care of me but it’s not like that at all. I feel like we’re pretty equal in that. It takes me a minute to get comfortable with people but once I get comfortable with people, D’Lite knows me, they’ve seen my crazy fun side: twerking on the walls (laughs) People see me as mean, cold, and like a bitch, I’m actually like really nice and friendly to people. I just look mean.
D’Lite: It could be also our dynamic because I’m so like ‘Hi, what’s going on?” like friendly, and Myriah’s like over here so it can give this perspective like ‘Oh this one is like this and that one is the cold one that doesn’t want to talk to people’ and in reality, that’s not it.
Myriah: It’s also kind of hard for me to make friends now as an adult because the last time I had real friends was in high school, and then I got into a toxic relationship right after that and I wasn’t allowed to see my family or have friends so I had 8 years of that, so now it’s kind of hard for me to reconnect with people. I kind of lost a part of myself in that and I’m trying to get that back.
What keeps your relationship hot/healthy relationship?
D’Lite: How we have the same goals and dreams and we want the same things from each other which is growth. There’s never been a time where I wanted to do something Myriah didn’t want to do it or she wanted to do something and I didn’t want to do it. We’re always on the same page about what we want which comes naturally and it’s great. I feel like going back to school is something we both wanted to do. Even when I wanted to move to Kansas City, she was down to come with me and moved to Kansas City to start a new life with me in a city she’s never been to, neither had I, also bringing Caleb. She’s always down to do anything that’s a step forward for us to learn or grow.
Myriah: Being respectful to one another even if we’re having an argument. Just keeping it respectful and an open conversation always.
What’s your dream for you two?
Myriah: My dream is to finish school with D’Lite, to be financially stable and to not worry about money anymore. We want to travel as a family and to do all the things we want to do and weren’t able to do… and hopefully settle on an island.
D’Lite: My dream for us is to be from my perspective, a successful family, because we both agree, having Caleb is such a huge impact not only in our lives but in everyone else’s life. I was telling her earlier that our family is not the typical family and being with Caleb means we’re revolutionary. He’s a boy growing up with queer parents which is not very common so I want us to be successful because of that too. I want to show the world that we can have this boy grow up to be a man; a wonderful person raised by queer people and also not be stressed and financially stable so that we can provide for each one of us. We want to make that family dream as minorities in America.
What does success look like to you?
D’Lite: It means if we can get our son to reach for the stars: go to college, go do this, even if it’s not going to college and let’s say he wanted to move to New York and do this and that, we want him to be able to do it and be able to share his experience that he had with us. That’s just with Caleb, with us as a couple, I want us to be happy where we’re at be it a city, island, New Zealand, wherever we want.
We just want to be comfortable with ourselves because after that, everything else comes along whether it’s music, creating art, or even having our own businesses, that all can come afterward. That’s successful to me you know, and then where we’re at the point and investing in businesses, Caleb’s doing his own thing, and we’re trying to continue our lives and influence other people.
We want to be influencers for other people with our family. There’s a lot of queer people who don’t really think about marriage or having a family because it’s not something they can see is possible, but it’s very possible to be married, have children, and be queer.
Advice to couples:
D’Lite: My advice is that It doesn’t matter queer or not queer, when it comes to marriage and relationship, it’s always about committment, whether it’s committing to the communication, committing to growth, committing to this person, that is a big key to having a solid relationship is being 100% committed to that person. Myriah – Open communication and be respectful.