Dillards 49: Dull Dillards Dulling

[Shadoewolf]

Jinger WAS the one who said she wanted to move away to a bigger city and stuff, then got the verbal smackdown from Jill about contentment.  Jeremy offered her that opportunity and from the things we see them do, it's better than what she'd have living under JB's thumb like her sisters.

[Pete Pickles]

@Crazy Enough to Join, I feel like I sparked this conversation by agreeing with a point you made and now you're having to defend it all over again, so I'm going to jump in again. 

I can't say with any certainty at all that there's abuse or isolation going on (and also can't say that there isn't, but I don't think so).  I do very strongly feel that Jeremy has little in common with the Duggars and is relieved not to be so near to them.  I think if he were near to them, he'd be searching for a quick way to leave.  (Even that is unfathomable though because I can't see Jeremy ever landing by random chance in NWA.)  (DISCLAIMER: I'm making up a hypothetical conversation here:) I can picture her saying, "Baaaabe we got a wedding invitation from my old friend Tori Bates.  My family is going.  Wanna go?"  And getting a response like, "Oh Baaaabe, you've had morning sickness recently and I know that kind of travel might be hard on you and is a huge financial burden.  Let's send her a card and go see a play instead!  We'll see your parents like a week later for Christmas anyway."  On one hand, this is reasonable if it's true and he's reminding her of legitimate reasons not to travel.  On the other, if she really wanted to go, and didn't think the travel would be too much for her (only she can really make that call) I would categorize it as a little controlling or bossy.  In that case, he's kind of manipulating the situation to avoid what she wants and to accomplish what he wants.  And to be honest, I'm sure a lot of us do that to some degree.  Jinger was raised to bend over backwards for others, that her needs are not important, and that she isn't allowed to question her headship's decision.  I can't call that isolating though because I have little in common with my in-laws and prefer not to be near them either, so I know how that is.   My mother used to truly believe a man I was dating (long-term) was isolating me.  I can't stand him now and have no reason to feel defensive, and I still have no idea how she came up with that.  Sometimes close families (especially families with no personal boundaries, like the kind who make 10 people share a bedroom) perceive isolation when things are actually normal.  I definitely agree with you on that.  I've said a few times I'm itching to know what's REALLY going on between Jeremy and Jim Bob, because I think it's clear Jeremy doesn't like his FIL too much at all.  Is Jeremy's keeping his distance causing Jinger to feel separated from her family?  Possibly.  Is it still pretty normal for those of us who grasp normal family dynamics and do not have the strong reliance on siblings/having a dad who never left the house for work/growing up homeschooled and also not leaving the house alone/literally having a sibling around the entire time we dated our spouses?  It wouldn't surprise me if she felt isolated and Jeremy had no idea.  It also wouldn't surprise me if she was coming into her own and didn't mind it one bit.  (My husband now--a different man than the one referenced above--will often suggest we see my family and I shoot him down when I don't want to.  He has made a few trips to visit my parents without me.  I've figured out that sometimes I'm happier away from them and Jinger may have decided that too.)  TL;DR: Probably not isolation as a form of abuse, but perception is reality and we don't know if she feels isolated or not.

Jeremy is a natural leader and I think it's clear that he's used to getting what he wants.  I really don't think he went seeking Jinger because he could easily control her, but I'm sure he loves having a beautiful woman following him around, adopting some of his hobbies, dutifully doting on him, and never questioning or challenging him.  I think his personality is controlling--to an extent, that's what leaders do.  Leaders have control over situations and even people in order to achieve some higher goal.  Her personality and the way she was raised has been to fawn over him and do as he says.  These two personalities can reek of dysfunction and can certainly appear controlling/controlled or even abuser/abused (again, I won't call it that because I can't, based on the limited evidence), or it may be working out very well for the two of them.  I definitely think he attempts to control more than just Jinger though, which is why I get laser-eye vibes between him and Jim Bob.

[CarrotCake]

If Jinger did not want to move away from her family she would not have started courting Jeremy.

 

[FloraKitty35]

14 hours ago, CorruptionInc. said:

Derick is an inconsiderate $!%@#@!$! who just wants to spout off all day and not be criticised. Because he's doing it in the name of God!

Having to do any kind of critical thinking would challenge Derick's precious beliefs and Cathy would have to defend her little man when those nasty wasty professors questioned him.

[Jenn The Heathen]

8 hours ago, Crazy Enough to Join said:

Haha, yeah. I doubt any of the Duggars would appreciate anything said on FJ.  And there were some things after the wedding/during the wedding (correct me if I'm wrong!) where Jeremy and Jinger said stuff, I think, about it had to be a certain amount of time before family was allowed to visit. Additionally, they seem to miss a lot of Duggar special events that the rest of the family attends and they don't have a horde of little sisters coming to their place to do all the work like the other Duggar married women seem to. To me, Jinger seems sad in her instagram and Jeremy's posts about her seem patronizing. To me, Derrick seems to treat Jill as an adult when he posts about her and Jill's post have a very distinct Jill-flavor (often in an unflattering way). It's not as if Derrick's personality is consuming Jill even to the way she posts about the kids. Jinger's post on the other hand seem more like "Oh, I'll post this because Jeremy wants me to." You don't get any unique Jinger flavor from her posts, imo.

Okay, so when you said you weren’t saying that you think Jeremy is isolating Jinger,  you actually do think he is.  As others have said, the things you are referencing are all totally normal for newlyweds.  I also don’t see it as necessarily a bad thing that Jinger doesn’t have her younger sisters coming over to do stuff for her.  If I were her, I wouldn’t want that either, regardless of how close they lived to me.  Those girls should, in theory, be acting like children, not doing their adult sisters’ housework.

I’ll echo the sentiment that speculation like this is wrong.  It’s one thing to speculate who’s pregnant or courting, but it’s a whole other animal to accuse a man of abusing his wife because of a few cherry picked incidents that fit your idea of abuse.  Did you know that sometimes gossip rags pass off things they read here as news?  It has happened before and as much as I don’t like Jeremy, I would hate for any person to be falsely accused of abuse for all the world to see.

[SamiKatz]

I don't get the controlling vibe about Jeremy that a lot of other people do, my overwhelming impression of him - from what little I've seen of him on TV - is that he thinks Jim Bob and Michelle are wacko, Jim Bob especially. 

And Jinger may be isolated from her family, but doesn't seem to be isolated from other people and seems to be free to come and go as she pleases.  Personally, I think isolation from her family can only be a good thing, and that the six month Duggar free period was probably a really "healthy" (if anything they do could ever be really healthy), step for her.

It's very unfortunate for Jill that her period away from her family was with Derrick, which I don't think was beneficial for her at all.  Plus she had a small child to care for, so she kind of went from one effed up environment to another.

 

 

[SweetJuly]

Frankly, we see so little of the Duggars yet feel we know them so well (the perils of reality TV, I suppose) that they are a bit of a Rohrschach test - we can interpret virtually anything onto them.

Is it possible that Jeremy is abusive and isolating Jinger? - It is possible, and someone who has experienced abuse or simply "wants" to see Jeremy as abusive, will be able to pick and list a few signs that could potentially point to him being so.

Is it possible that Jinger is actually thrilled with being away from the Duggar madhouse? - It is also possible, and someone who would go crazy if they were forced to live at the TTH and generally finds Duggar life as seen on TV suffocating, is very likely to see and list all the signs that point to her being so.

Personally I agree with those who said that Jeremy thinks that (some of the) Duggars are nuts, and that Jeremy is someone who likes to lead and get his own way.

I also think it is dangerous and inappropriate to diagnose from afar an abusive relationship or mental health issues or disabilities or whatnot. However, I can see that it would be tempting. In the presence of the piecemeal information we receive about the Duggars - enough to give us the illusion that we know them well when in reality we don't know them at all! - we yearn for satisfying blanket explanations to make sense of the chaos we're presented with.

Thanks for all those on FJ who fight to stop the speculation train when it is, once again, threatening to derail in the heat of battle 

[SapphireSlytherin]

1 hour ago, SweetJuly said:

the perils of reality TV, I suppose

....aaaaaaaaaaaannnnndddddddd... I read that as "the penis of reality TV"

I'll see myself to the prayer closet.

[VelociRapture]

Add me to the list of those grossed out by this conversation. It’s completely irresponsible to accuse anyone of abuse (or adultery or diagnose them with X condition, etc.) when all you have as evidence is a handful of highly edited clips from a “reality” show and a few posts on social media that could be completely harmless. This isn’t the comment section for People Magazine - FJ is better than this.

[LacyMay]

3 hours ago, SamiKatz said:

my overwhelming impression of him - from what little I've seen of him on TV - is that he thinks Jim Bob and Michelle are wacko, Jim Bob especially. 

Because they are haha 

 

In all seriousness though, if you were Jeremy being told that you couldn't hug your grown up 20 year old fiance  (who presumably had no issues with being hugged by you) *wouldn't you also think her parents were a little ridiculous? 

*Because the speculation train could go off the tracks at the slightest nudge I want to be perfectly clear. I think Jeremy probably had a healthy level of snark at some of the courtship rules. I do not think he had any malicious feelings towards the Duggars nor do I think he has a strong dislike towards them that caused him to isolate Jinger. 

[Fascinated]

1 hour ago, VelociRapture said:

Add me to the list of those grossed out by this conversation. It’s completely irresponsible to accuse anyone of abuse (or adultery or diagnose them with X condition, etc.) when all you have as evidence is a handful of highly edited clips from a “reality” show and a few posts on social media that could be completely harmless. This isn’t the comment section for People Magazine - FJ is better than this.

Also, we are being extremely careless and potentially harmful - we must not forget that the tabloids glean much of their ‘information’ from here.

[2manyKidzzz]

Well, young people generally want to be independent of their parents. Jinger knew how far away Laredo was and really, she has her hot new husband and why wouldn’t she want to start her life with him. If they lived just and hour from Duggarville I’m sure they would have seen more of the menagerie in Tontitown. I haven’t listened to Jeremy’s sermons but I believe what I hear here at FJ. Not surprised as it is classic fundy wisdom. Jinger got what she wanted in life. In that respect it seems fine. 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

13 hours ago, Georgiana said:

Now, I'm no Jeremy fan, but I think the examples you gave are completely reasonable behavior. Jinger's family struggles with boundaries. They are overwhelming in numbers and known to be heavily enmeshed with their married children. MOST families back off for a time after a couple weds to give them space to adjust, but the Duggars often send children to them. It's perfectly normal to want more alone time as newlyweds, and because the Duggars are the Duggars, Jeremy and Jinger had to make that explicit. 

And the thing is, they've had PLENTY of family visits since those 6 months have been up. 

And it seems normal that they miss family events. Jeremy has actual employment, and they live states away. He can't plan his life around the Duggar schedule like Josh, Derick, and Ben can. Plus there are A WHOLE LOT of family events. Jinger and Jeremy would hardly have their own lives and hobbies if they went to every one. Heck, even I've missed family events since moving out and my family is 20 minutes away. It's normal when you have your own, unique life away from your family. 

I'm starting to wonder if Joy & Austin didn't have some version of no family for 6 months like Jinger & Jeremy did. Since they are so close it was harder though, and Joy's brother & good friend got married in that time so they couldn't avoid that but they were mostly absent from social media with a few exceptions like Joe's wedding and their pregnancy announcement and a handful of Insta posts. Perhaps they instituted a MINIMIMAL family/TV show contact except for major events that they needed to be present for. They are about 40/45 minutes away from TTH, so it is hard to travel that far every day.  And they were busy trying to put their house together when he wasn't working at the family camp or flipping other homes. They weren't there for Thanksgiving (and Jinger was) they came over for the girls birthday, and Austin's, I didn't see them in the Christmas video at all but we saw JoKen, Izzy & Spurg so you now the Dullards and Benessa where there, Jinger and Jeremy weren't again.  

[nokidsmom]

I don't get the speculation.

I always thought that Jinger is living where she is because that's where Jeremy's job is and nothing to do with keeping her away from her family.   If Jeremy's church was anywhere else, that's where they would be living.

And if Jeremy thinks his in-laws are weird (not saying he does), he would not be the only person in the world who thinks that of his/her in-laws.  

Having time alone during the first months as newlyweds also seems completely normal, therefore the "Duggarless" six months.  

Some people really do want distance from family for their own wellbeing, whatever the reasons are.  Maybe that's the case for Jinger, maybe not.  

 

[singsingsing]

Jinger and Jeremy did not have a 'no family for six months' rule. They had a 'no house guests for six months' rule. Very different!

[SapphireSlytherin]

19 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

They are about 40/45 minutes away from TTH, so it is hard to travel that far every day.

That's my twice-daily commute time. lol

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

50 minutes ago, SapphireSlytherin said:

That's my twice-daily commute time. lol

I HATE commuting, one of the many reasons we stay where we do.  I have a 25 minute commute with traffic, but it is all city driving.  In Chicago, Nashville, Dallas, NYC, DC, LA, any major city it would be 60 to 90 minute ONE WAY, I drive 17 miles one way.

[Ace3]

17 hours ago, Pete Pickles said:

Derick has also said HIMSELF that he has been employed since age 5. Guess we all take him at his word now.

Yes and my 3 year old keeps telling me he'll miss me when he goes to work at his office job. I guess if I believe that then Derrick must be telling the truth. So totally believing you, Derrick... 

[apandaaries]

33 minutes ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

 In Chicago, Nashville, Dallas, NYC, DC, LA, any major city it would be 60 to 90 minute ONE WAY, I drive 17 miles one way.

Not necessarily.  A lot of people settle in cities where they are close to work and other amenities they enjoy. When I lived in LA, my commute was half an hour.  The friends I know who are still there have commutes under 30 minutes, too.  People I know in DC and NYC all live close to their work as well. Urban dwellers aren't all necessarily living hellish lives that consist mainly of commuting and working. In fact, now that I'm in a much more rural area, I spend much more time commuting than I ever did living in any urban environment. 

Not trying to start another urban-rural/red state-blue state debate, but I do think it's healthy for us to remember that stereotypes aren't the best way assert claims. 

[Glasgowghirl]

Jinger wanted to move away to bigger city, her and Jeremy had the no visitors for six months rule, that included both sides of the family and I understand why they done it, she loves her family but grew up with little privacy and maybe she wanted time to adjust to married life. I also think that is why she waited to get pregnant. I don't see Jeremy as a controlling man, he can be vain and hot headed but I don't see him being abusive. The one I see most likely to be abusive is Derick but again that doesn't mean he is.

[nickelodeon]

Pretty much every facet of Duggar marriage (Christian patriarchy, quiverfull, "joyfully available", covenant marriage) is designed to keep women vulnerable to abuse and protect abusers, and that def deserves our attention! Buuut wild speculation about someone's marriage being toxic is not really the most appropriate way to go about it.

[Chickenbutt]

I think Jeremy loves Jinger and Jinger loves Jeremy. Anything else is between them.

[VineHeart137]

Derick bought Jill some chocolate milk at the store so he's obviously better than everybody else's husband. Obviously.

(Now I'm really craving chocolate milk though, damn.)

 

[front hugs > duggs]

Is Promisedland her favorite brand because it just sounds Christian?

[JillyO]

I honestly try not to judge other people so much based on their likes and dislikes (hey, I was happy my husband picked up some Popeye's on his way home yesterday). But the fact that Jill constantly publicly praises Derick for THE SMALLEST LITTLE THINGS and always has to call him #besthubbyintheworld really makes me think that her life must be utterly boring, sad and depressing.