Do you ever have a moment when you suddenly remember that one of the Duggars has slipped your mind?
You wake up in a cold sweat and exclaim: “Wait? What is Jana’s twin, John David Duggar up to these days?! Who is John David Duggar courting?!”
Let us put your minds at ease — or, you know, as close as we can get where the Duggars are concerned — with a look at John David Duggar’s rumored courting history. Remember, new episodes of Counting On are coming sooner than you think!
A courting history is, of course, like a dating history but if you’re in a deeply controlling fertility cult and, instead of rescuing you and your siblings from it, America just watches it on TV.
Courting comes with rules, like forbidding the those who are courting to be alone together.
And, of course, the infamous side-hugs, because hugging people from the front like all humans have hugged since the dawn of time is how the devil gets you, or something.
It’s designed to give controlling patriarchs like Jim Bob absolute control over their families and to encourage intensely sexually frustrated teenagers to be so desperate for relief that they leap at the chance to marry young.
John David Duggar, like his twin sister, Jana, is 27.
Also like Jana, he’s conspicuously single.
In a normal family, there are people who don’t date and plenty of people who never get married or even intend to, especially when they’re still in their twenties.
For the Duggars, though, that makes John David and Jana both into something like old maids.
New episodes of Counting On are coming in September.
(September 11th, actually, which will never not be an awkward time to have anything, whether it’s a birthday or a season premiere).
Jana Duggar has passed up plenty of courtships, and John David has kept whatever exists of his courting life under wraps.
Rumor suggests, however, that there will be more courtship news in upcoming episodes, and we could finally get to meet a confirmed courtship of John David’s.
Now, the most recent rumored courting that John David did was with Tabitha Paine.
Tabitha Paine is the sister-in-law of Erin Bates, of Bringing Up Bates, because we didn’t get enough “quiverfull” maniacs from the Duggars and needed more reasons to have trouble getting to sleep at night.
Now, Tabitha denied the rumor and claimed that the two of them were just hanging out because she was, at the time, working for Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar as a tutor for their children.
That’s a shame, because Tabitha Paine is a great name.
Now if you’ll remember back to November 2014, John David was seen having dinner with a brunette.
It turned out that the girl, only identified through an Instagram name that she’s since changed, was just a friend of the Duggar family and that the two of them were not courting.
(That’s interesting, since Mike Pence is no Duggar but he wouldn’t dare be caught dining with a woman who isn’t his wife, for creepy reasons)
In 2015, Jim Bob actually spoke about that, making it clear that John David wasn’t courting anyone at the time but that he was a great catch.
(More like bait to add to the ever-growing Duggar family tree)
And then, just last year, John David’s sister Jessa was strongly hinting that Jinger knew more about John David’s love life than anyone else did, and that he had some sort of courtship (or something) going on.
This was on Counting On, so we imagine that there was something to it … or they were just trying to cover for his lack of a love life.
The very latest that we’ve heard about John David’s love life was last month, when he said that his imagined proposal would be more impressive than Austin Forsyth’s.
But, like … knowing how you want to propose (in his case, he likes planes, so probably on a plane) and knowing to whom you want to propose are very different things.
Either from fans of the series or from his family, John David Duggar has to be feeling pressure to start courting in earnest.
If he isn’t courting and if he doesn’t want to court, that’s fine, no matter what expectations his awful father has of him.
But if he is courting someone in private, maybe she’s camera-shy or doesn’t want to be famous.
If so, good for John David — he can marry her and escape from the Duggar nightmare as much as possible without cutting all ties, since he and his bride wouldn’t be appearing on camera.
Or maybe he’s been waiting until he courts someone truly special before he introduces her to his whole family or to viewers.
It could be that he’ll reveal her on one of these new episodes.
