Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo Say 1st Year of Marriage 'Was the Hardest’

Jinger Duggar and her husband, Jeremy Vuolo, are reflecting candidly on the early days of their union.

During the Wednesday, September 18, episode of their “Jinger & Jeremy Podcast,” the couple, who tied the knot in 2016, were both surprised by their revelations about their first year of marriage.

“I’m looking back 8 years in [and] going, ‘That year was a breeze.’ … But then you [said] last night, ‘No, I think it was the hardest,’ and I think I agree with you,” Vuolo, 37, said. “We faced so much adjustment and so much change.”

Duggar, 30, noted that the struggles had “nothing to do” with her and Vuolo.

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“We got along super well,” she said. “I would say there were challenges just from me adjusting. It was more, like, adjustment challenges.”

The 19 Kids and Counting alum shared that living with Vuolo for the first time and starting their lives together was the “easiest part” of the life change. It was leaving behind her big family in Arkansas for Laredo, Texas, that left her reeling.

“I realized in that time [that] I was afraid to go to coffee with a friend. I was petrified in fear of having to do things by myself because I had a security blanket of having people around me all the time, whether that was siblings or even a close friend,” said Jinger, who is one of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s 19 kids. “I was so used to that setting.”

The reality TV personality explained that “something shifted” for her after leaving her “comfort zone” for the first time.

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“It was really hard. I had to figure out who I was as a person,” she said. “I had the identity crisis of, ‘OK. I know who I was in my family, but who am I as an individual now?’”

Jinger was also beginning to reexamine some of the fundamentalist Christian teachings she’d been raised with.

“I was realizing that some of these things that I thought I really held dear, like the teachings of [Institute in Basic Life Principles founder] Bill Gothard, I’m realizing I’m not believing that anymore,” she recalled. “And that was a huge shift.”

Jinger wrote a book about her conservative Christian upbringing, Becoming Free Indeed: Disentangling Faith From Fear, which was released in January 2023. In the memoir, she recalled being taught she “needed to perform” for her future spouse in order to “keep him faithful,” which resulted in her not expressing opinions during her first year of marriage.

“[Jeremy] gently encouraged me to speak my mind and let him know if I didn’t agree with something — and to not apologize for that. He didn’t want me to perform or be fake. He wanted me to be myself. More than once he said, ‘Jing, you’re not a Stepford wife,’” she wrote. “The first time he said that, I asked, ‘What’s a Stepford wife?’ When he explained the concept, I realized … he wanted me to think for myself and figure out what my convictions were and what I liked and disliked.”

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Despite realizing in hindsight how challenging their first year of marriage was, Jinger said on Wednesday that “the growth that took place over that time was huge.”

“We weathered those storms and we came out stronger,” Vuolo added.

Jinger and Vuolo share daughters Felicity, 6, and Evangeline Jo, 3. Jinger said during an episode of the pair’s podcast last month that she’s game to expand their family, especially with twins.

“If we had another kid, had twins, I’d be down for it,” she said. “I feel like it would be a lot of work initially but then you also just … it’s a faster way to have babies.”