Jill Duggar Dillard is opening up about how her reality TV shows almost tore a part her marriage. In an interview with People, the 32-year-old author sat down to discuss how the family's reality shows, 19 Kids and Counting, and its spin-off, Counting On, took a toll on her relationship with her lawyer husband, Derick Dillard.
The initial show aired on TLC for seven years until its cancelation in 2015. The spin-off show aired for five years, filming 11 seasons, until it was canceled in September 2020.
"It caused a lot of frustration in our marriage," Jill shared. "Especially early on, where he would feel a certain way about filming something. I'd be like, 'I hear you, I feel you, I also don't want to do whatever it is they're asking us to do either. But we have to.'"
In the couple's new book, Counting the Cost, they reveal a lot of unknown things about their time filming the reality shows. The main thing was that after they got married in 2014, they no longer really wanted to be a part of the show that focused on the conservative Christian Duggar family.
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The couple didn't want to devote 20 hours a week to camera time anymore. Instead, they wanted to go about their lives in their own way, with their own jobs and own family.
"It began to feel like a burden," a passage in the book reads. The book is set to release on September 12, 2023.
As part of her family's belief system, Jill was raised with the idea that one should always honor their parents and do as they say. Keeping that in mind, she found it hard to say no to her father, Jim Bob Duggar and the demanding filming requests of the TLC shows.
"It definitely got between us," she says of her marriage to Derick. "No matter your age, you are to obey your parents' wishes and you even have to ask them for their blessing for any major moment in your life. That could be buying a house, moving to a different state, where to go to school. We were dealing with this a lot when we were trying to make decisions for our family, and we were really wrestling back and forth with it."
"Whenever we were at odds with what her dad thought we should be doing with filming, he would say things that would be very damaging," Derick said of Jim Bob, and Jill agreed. "He would weaponize the relationship and say, 'Is this you Jill, or is this you, Derick? Are you leading your wife astray and doing things that are not supportive of marriage?' And I think that was a red flag."
After years of putting up with it, Jill and Derick have now found a happy place in their marriage, living a life out of the spotlight. "Therapy was the gift we didn't know we needed," Jill explained. "We initially went into it with the goal of re-establishing a relationship with my parents, but once we go there, the therapist was like, 'I think we maybe need to do a little more processing, a little more sorting out here. You guys need to figure out who you are.' Which was so wise. It helped us so much."
