Josie and Kelton 2: Kelton Gets His Happily Ever After

[bal maiden]

20 minutes ago, Rachel333 said:

You're mixing up the age of consent and the age of majority. Those are two different concepts.

And I definitely think that reaching legal age doesn't automatically make someone mature. I think 18-year-olds can be very vulnerable too.

I understand the concepts quite well, but evidently I wasn’t clear enough in making my point about the fluidity of reaching maturity and adulthood, and thus the capabilities of 16 year olds to make decisions about romantic partnerships. 

 

Fwiw, I still think Kelton is a twat.

[BrandoBarks]

Just chiming in to say my experience/ opinion with age gaps so I’m not saying anything about Josie and Kelton specifically. I lived in 2 European countries and especially in Germany, it’s very common that 16 year olds don’t get a 12-year-high school diploma but start working real jobs within their professional training. That’s why they’re not considered children but more as young adults even if the legal drinking age or the “legal adult age” is 18. That’s why a relationship between a 16 year old and a 19 year old would widely be accepted whereas 16 and 22/23 (or 15 and 20) would start to look a bit strange. When I was in 10th grade I had a boyfriend in 13th grade (16 and 19) and it was ok, we were in the same school and when he went off to college we broke up because of the distance. 

[freethemall]

54 minutes ago, bal maiden said:

18 is not the age of consent everywhere. It's 16 in the UK. 15 in Sweden. It was 13 in Spain, and 14 to get married until recently. I think this is why so many of us Euro types are finding it hard to buy into this 'she's a child; he's an adult' argument, as in our cultures *and* legal frameworks, there is not such a hard and fast line at 18. Yes, a 16 year old *is* less mature, and yes, parents and others *should* look out for red flags. But referring to a 16yo as a 'child' seems to me to be being deliberately absurd - but of course I understand that those arguing that she was a child are also arguing from their own cultural perspective. 

I agree with you, especially since in Tennessee you are legally allowed to get married at 16, with parental consent. For whatever else we can criticize Kelton about, accusing him of being a pedophile (such as those posts of Josie as a 13 year old 3 years before he met her) are a bit out of line. In the end, he accepted her and her parent's decision about waiting to court, albeit brooded about it. Let's remember a 20 year old guy basically has the maturity of a 17 year old, so he responded with teenage angst, but it's not like he came back to her parents and said "I refuse, we're dating now and I'm stealing her away." He came back when she was old enough and it seems like she is truly in love, this is not an arranged marriage and no one is forcing her.  

Feel free to give me the "move along" emoji if I'm beating a dead horse, maybe we should all just move along from this dumb letter he wrote.

[nelliebelle1197]

3 hours ago, JillyO said:

Alright. Since this last part is pretty obviously directed at me, I'll bite.

I don't mind the fact that topics I don't care for are discussed. This is par for the course on FJ, happens all the time, and I always just happily scroll on past. This is not what my issue with this thread is. What I do mind is the fact that in this thread, everyone who doesn't agree with the popular narrative that Kelton is a creepy, manipulative adult jerk who was infatuated with a child, is called a Bates fan, and basically shut down. The conversation here is pretty much just a circle jerk.

Now, if you (general you, not you @nausicaa ) have been reading in this forum for a while, it should be pretty obvious that I am in no way a Bates fan. And I am also not a Kelton fan. I can even see how some of the things he wrote in the love story thing can be seen as red flags (I don't interpret what he writes this way, but I understand why maybe others do). But I absolutely cannot stand the rampant claims of "a grown adult who is obsessed with a child," where anyone who dares to disagree is immediately shut down and discredited.

I don't think a 16-year-old dating a 20-year-old is a problem. At all. I do think there is a problem with sheltering your children so much that they are unable to discern for themselves if someone is a good fit for them or not. That is a problem pretty much all the second-gen fundies we follow have. I don't believe that something magically changes the minute someone turns 18. One doesn't go from child to adult within one day. Adolescence is a real thing, and it's incredibly important to give young people the tools to start making their own choices during this time. I find it kind of ironic how all of a sudden, most posters here thinks it's oh-so-great that Gil and Kelly pretty much forbade Josie from being friends with Kelton (it's not like they were even doing anything physical whatsoever). I personally think this is ridiculous. Of course Josie shouldn't be on track to get married at 16. But my personal reaction to that is "it's a damn shame that Josie was not allowed to be friends with, and eventually date, the guy she was clearly smitten with, and that she didn't get the chance to see if they would work out as a couple or not." So no, I'm not at all convinced that Kelton and Josie are necessarily a great fit long term. But I think they should have been given the chance to figure it out for themselves, and not been told to wait until Josie turned the magical number of 18, as if that somehow suddenly made her able to know exactly whether Kelton is the person she should marry. If they had started dating when she was 16, I'd say there's a pretty good chance they would have broken up at some point, and everyone would have moved on. If not, then they would have a solid foundation of a three-year relationship now and would be in a much better place to get married (if that is what they would still want to do) than they are now.

To quickly reply to the first part of your post, I am from a culture where such age differences are pretty normal, and no one I know (including myself) has been negatively impacted. I never had a serious relationship with anyone significantly older than myself, but I had an affair with a guy who was 20 when I was 16, and another one with a 27-year-old shortly before my 18th birthday. Met my now-husband when I was 19 and he was 20, and at 28, we are happily married. I have zero regrets about anything. I also have a friend who started dating her boyfriend of 10 years when she was 16 and he was 20. They eventually broke up, but, you know, most couples do. She certainly does not regret the relationship. Another friend from high school started dating a 33-year-old guy when she was 19 (yes, I know she was a legal adult, so slightly different, but plenty of people in this thread still said that that would be wrong). She is now 30, they are happily married and have a child together (she is also stepmom to his kids from a previous marriage). I could give more examples, but as you already said, the plural of anecdote is not data. However, from my own experience, I have never seen any issues arise. And I plan to allow my future children to make their own choices when it comes to dating.

Just FYI,there are plenty of states where a 20 year old dating a 16 year old would land the 20 year old in jail and on a sex offender registry. You are not in the US, if I recall, so you may not realize that. Some folks were flipping out about Bro. Gary's 30 year old liberties with a minor charge, but it could have been the exact situation as Josie and Kelton, as I pointed out.

@JillyO I don't think you are a fangirl of any of these people. If I gave that impression it was not intentional. But there are a few serious fans on here who downvote anything too negative about the Bates, even when they don't post about them. You can see it in other threads. Those are the ones that frustrate me.

[Rachel333]

10 minutes ago, bal maiden said:

I understand the concepts quite well, but evidently I wasn’t clear enough in making my point about the fluidity of reaching maturity and adulthood, and thus the capabilities of 16 year olds to make decisions about romantic partnerships. 

 

Fwiw, I still think Kelton is a twat.

I don't think anyone really believes it's a hard line where the one day you turn 18 makes all the difference in your maturity. I've pointed out in this discussion before in response to people talking about statutory rape laws that I think a relationship being legal is the bare minimum and doesn't mean that there are no other issues with it.

The age of majority is 18 in the US, by the way, and the age of consent is lower and varies by state. It seems like a lot of people at least confuse those numbers even if they understand the concepts. 

[JillyO]

1 hour ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

Just FYI,there are plenty of states where a 20 year old dating a 16 year old would land the 20 year old in jail and on a sex offender registry. You are not in the US, if I recall, so you may not realize that. Some folks were flipping out about Bro. Gary's 30 year old liberties with a minor charge, but it could have been the exact situation as Josie and Kelton, as I pointed out.@JillyO

I do live in the US these days, not that it matters much. My attitude about this most certainly stems from growing up in Germany.

I know that the age of consent in some states (including Tennessee) is 18. However, I highly doubt that a 20-year-old dating a 16-year-old would land anyone in jail. Now, a sexual relationship might, but it's not like that would ever be an option with these people. Before marriage, they really don't to more physically with their significant others than regular people do with their platonic friends.

[Carm_88]

I don't think that turning 18 magically matures you, but living in the world sure does. When I graduated high school, I was 17. Age of Consent in Canada is 16, which means that I could legally have sex. I talked a bit in my first semester about a senior, he was 21-ish. To say the least my parents were concerned. Why? Because I was just out of high school and immature. This guy may have been immature, may have been a great guy who just happened to like a younger girl, could have been into naive virgins. It's very hard to say. My parents couldn't tell me what to do, I wasn't living in their house, but they could disapprove from a distance and that held weight in my young mind. So nothing happened and we stopped being friends. 

What did he want? I don't know and right now I will never know. Age differences can be weird in all situations. Does it shift the power balance? Sometimes. Usually in a situation where one is much more immature than the other. I think it evens out as time goes by. 

Kelton and Josie? I don't know. I can see things that are iffy, but I can also see the world that they live in. I hope it's just a shitty write up. 

[SilverBeach]

9 hours ago, JillyO said:

I don't think a 16-year-old dating a 20-year-old is a problem.

Does this hold true if the woman is the twenty year old?

I disagree, but my perspective is based on my experience and that of girls in my high school. I experienced a hell of a lot between 16 and 18, its not about the number being magical. Hell, Sarah Maxwell is 35 or so but no more mature than your average 16 year old. A high school junior and a college junior are worlds apart. Most 20 year old men aren't going to want to go to the high school prom. My life concerns about preparing for college would be his concerns about getting a job after college. Totally different phases of life. Later on, four years is pretty meaningless, but not at this stage of life. My first relationship was with someone my age, and I like men in my peer group anyway. To each her own.

Kelton shows signs of being a creepy-ass controlling fundy man.

[mstee]

Kelton and Evan have very entitled/ know it all attitudes IMO and I think that puts a bad taste in my mouth, more so than the age difference. I feel like Kelton hides it a little better than Evan, but he still seems to think a little too highly of himself. I just hope that he treats Josie well once they’re married and isn’t the type who gets complacent once he has what he wants. 

[Hisey]

4 hours ago, mstee said:

Kelton and Evan have very entitled/ know it all attitudes IMO and I think that puts a bad taste in my mouth, more so than the age difference. I feel like Kelton hides it a little better than Evan, but he still seems to think a little too highly of himself. I just hope that he treats Josie well once they’re married and isn’t the type who gets complacent once he has what he wants. 

I actually think its great that Josie has a profession and a strong family behind her that loves her. Some of these fundy women marry young, have no skills or education and their family would be furious if they divorced. The men know this, and they also know the woman is supposed to "submit." It seems almost inevitable, in such a case, that the man is going to slip into complacency, unless he is a truly decent guy.

[Hisey]

Kelton behaves very oddly in this video. Look at his hand at around 1:15 (the hand that is on Josie's shoulder). He keeps poking her, that would drive me crazy. Maybe he's nervous?

Quote

https://www.batesfamilyblog.com/2018/08/next-steps-for-trace-and-josie.html

 

[formergothardite]

29 minutes ago, Hisey said:

He keeps poking her, that would drive me crazy. Maybe he's nervous?

That was weird. Maybe he didn't know what to do with his hands? He squeezed her and then kept his fingers jabbing into her shoulder. 

[nolongerIFBx]

On 8/24/2018 at 7:02 PM, formergothardite said:

"an adult who is off in college able to date other people and able to make life decisions."  

 

At PCC? (No offense to formergothardite, just using her quote.) I dare say 99.9% of them are still completely dependent on their parents and not able to make any life decisions that don't fall in line with what their parents allow.  An incoming freshman at PCC isn't like an incoming freshman at University of X State. He may have literally never been outside the house unaccompanied before. For some, it is the very first time they have ever spent a night away from home without a parent. (BG teaches against sleepovers and even if Balkas weren't ATI/IBLP, I met plenty of IFBx who also followed that rule. Hilariously, I was allowed to spend the night at my best friend's but she was never allowed to spend the night at my house.)

Since they weren't contemplating a sexual relationship (before marriage), Josie would not qualify as jail bait and since Kelton was heading to college he knew all that would be involved for the next four years was mostly letter writing (I guess in this era, texting, but Bates would be included in the texts).

As for the forgiveness he mentioned, I agree with others that all negative feelings are required to be stifled. He labeled it forgiveness, but acceptance or "gotten over it" could essentially mean the same thing.

[formergothardite]

He wasn't as free as most college students, but he could date. He was at a totally different level of life than Josie. Josie was a sheltered teen who couldn't make hardly any choices for herself. Kelton was at least living outside the home able to date people. 

Why would he need to get over a 16 year old isn't old enough to be in a serious heading towards marriage relationship with him? That is something fairly easy to understand. This wasn't some little disappointment. His dad had to talk to him about it and just hearing about Tori made him upset. Seriously, age aside, if I told this sort of a story about a guy and asked advice people would tell me there were red flags. 

[mstee]

My husband does that to me when we’re in a crowd and he’s speaking (like Kelton in that video). He doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. It’s just a nervous habit. At first I was like what is he doing??? But soon realized it was just an outlet for nerves. He doesn’t do it when speaking around people he is comfortable with. 

[Hisey]

2 hours ago, nolongerIFBx said:

Since they weren't contemplating a sexual relationship (before marriage), Josie would not qualify as jail bait

Do we really know what Kelton (or Josie!) was contemplating? No, we don't. We know what they said (exactly what their parents would want them to say). 

Plenty of fundies have pre-marital sex, or hope for it.

[nickelodeon]

Eh, I don't think we have any reason to presume that such hyper-dogmatic people would break their own rules like that @Hisey.

That said, for this religion, dating isn't just hanging out and making out or other age appropriate activities for a teen couple; it's about taking (extremely rapid) steps toward lifelong commitment- one in which the wife has to perform a ridiculous amount of physical and emotional labor, including reproductive sex and pregnancy. So it's easy to see why people find it inappropriate for someone to seek that with a teenager...

[Hisey]

1 hour ago, nickelodeon said:

Eh, I don't think we have any reason to presume that such hyper-dogmatic people would break their own rules like that @Hisey.

Josh Duggar. It happens. 

[llg1234]

7 hours ago, Hisey said:

Kelton behaves very oddly in this video. Look at his hand at around 1:15 (the hand that is on Josie's shoulder). He keeps poking her, that would drive me crazy. Maybe he's nervous?

 

I didn't think it was that weird, but something in that video did stand out to me: Tori said Josie's going to be in wedding planning mode until October. The clip was filmed back in May (they're wearing the same outfits here). They might have been 'formally' engaged back in June, but they definitely have been planning for a lot longer than what they want us to think.

[RainbowSky]

@Hisey, I'm guessing you didn't see Duggar learning to drive episodes?

[just_ordinary]

11 hours ago, llg1234 said:

I didn't think it was that weird, but something in that video did stand out to me: Tori said Josie's going to be in wedding planning mode until October. The clip was filmed back in May (they're wearing the same outfits here). They might have been 'formally' engaged back in June, but they definitely have been planning for a lot longer than what they want us to think.

I think you might be right. I am always assuming that whatever stage they are announcing is already going on for longer than we will know or have already an open understanding. 

I think Duggars and Bates have learned from the latest failed courtships and only  announce „safe“ information now. The increased public interest and the attention of their critics (aka us and others) will have played a role as to why a failed courtship is probably not shown anymore.

[BeccaGrim]

I think it was clear when they asked Gil (in such a strange moment, he kept saying 'he liked Josie') to get engaged that she wanted a fall wedding. Knowing it was coming, she may have started to plan. Also, the live video was not filmed in May. It was last week. Those are legitimately live on FB. 

[wandering woman]

Kelton did a major amount of brown nosing Gil in the scene at the restaurant when they were talking about marriage. He doesn't seem genuine to me.

[Naughty&nice]

On 8/27/2018 at 10:04 AM, JillyO said:

What I do mind is the fact that in this thread, everyone who doesn't agree with the popular narrative that Kelton is a creepy, manipulative adult jerk who was infatuated with a child, is called a Bates fan, and basically shut down. The conversation here is pretty much just a circle jerk.

Now, if you (general you, not you @nausicaa ) have been reading in this forum for a while, it should be pretty obvious that I am in no way a Bates fan. ...But I absolutely cannot stand the rampant claims of "a grown adult who is obsessed with a child," where anyone who dares to disagree is immediately shut down and discredited.

Well said.

What’s ridiculous here are all these claims that Kelton was obsessed with Josie, pining for her for years, felt entitled to her,  couldn’t get over her etc.

Go back & READ the story - THEY WERE ONLY APART for 11 MONTHS!! That’s how long the entire breakup lasted.  (Fall 2015 thru Fall 2016) That's how long Josie’s  parents felt she needed to grow up & mature (if you believe that part of the narrative that Kelly came up with which I don’t) during which time, according to this forum, Kelton had another serious girlfriend. That doesn’t sound very “obsessed” to me.

i think some of these posters, who are bullying anyone with a contrary opinion,  are cherry picking this story to fit their  “all fundie men are misogynist jerks” narrative.

On 8/27/2018 at 1:55 PM, nelliebelle1197 said:

Just FYI,there are plenty of states where a 20 year old dating a 16 year old would land the 20 year old in jail 

 

I think you are confusing dating with having sex.... No one goes to jail for dating.

[Hisey]

7 hours ago, Naughty&nice said:

What’s ridiculous here are all these claims

So, let's see. You are calling people ridiculous. . . 

7 hours ago, Naughty&nice said:

Go back & READ the story

Making orders and shouting. . . 

7 hours ago, Naughty&nice said:

THEY WERE ONLY APART for 11 MONTHS!!

Shouting again, this time with exclamation points (two of them). . . 

7 hours ago, Naughty&nice said:

are cherry picking this story . . .

and being insulting.

And yet you say other people are bullying you?