'Meet The Duggars': Inside the scandalous love story of Josiah Duggar and Lauren Swanson
We all are pretty much aware that marriage is on the cards for Josiah Duggar and his girlfriend Lauren Swanson, the Duggar family is hell-bent on keeping the details of this wedding under covers as much as possible. And even though they are claiming the reason for this game of hide-and-seek is to stop obsessive fans gate-crash the wedding celebrations, speculations point towards somewhere really different.
Josiah and Lauren were first linked together when they duo was traveling with the Duggar clan on their trip to Australia. Without wasting any more time, they announced their courtship, few months after returning to the States.
However, when fans couldn't believe the claims of Josiah dating Lauren, the entire Duggar family, in their own traditional style, released one of their traditional welcoming videos which saw Jim Bob and Michelle do most of the talking (as usual there was a lot said about Jesus too).
By the time the video came out, Josiah and Lauren had pretty much fallen into the usual Duggar family pattern of courtships. Although, it did come with its own share of subtle differences as compared to the previous family courtships.
A certified rebel of the family, Josiah, has always found a way of somehow working around the rules that his family set up for matters like courtships and bending them as per his convenience. However, it was a surprise to see how his first courtship, unlike the other members of his family, did not end up in a marriage at all.
When Josiah was dating his ex-girlfriend Marjorie Jackson in 2015, it almost felt like the couple was headed straight for the altar. The couple even went far enough to make their own video announcing their courtship to the world. However, when Jim Bob and Michelle did not make their usual appearance in the video, a lot of fans were led to speculate that maybe the Duggar family did not approve of Marjorie.
It even made sense for the Duggars to not see Marjorie as a potential member of their ever-expanding family since she was already an accomplished career woman and a published author when she met and started dating Josiah.
Maybe all of these reasons later added up for Josiah, and the couple split after only a few months of dating. And even though there was no formal announcement of their breakup, fans and followers of the Duggar family pieced all the information together when they discovered that Josiah had deleted all of Marjorie's pictures from his social media account.
And even though Josiah himself has vaguely commented on their breakup, there were quite a lot of rumors going around that Marjorie was going to release a tell-all memoir about the Duggars, but the book never really materialized.
After whatever happened between him and Marjorie, Josiah took a long time to find love for himself, and when he did open up his heart for love after more than two years, in came Lauren. Just like Josiah, she too was a rebel in-and-out, and maybe that was what drove Josiah closer to her.
In her own small and subtle ways, Lauren started to put her foot down and establish her independence in the Duggar family, first and foremost by violating their code of conduct when it came to dressing up, by wearing above-the-knee shorts.
Moreover, it was rumored that the couple would get married in summer this year, but the duo abruptly changed the dates for their wedding. The widespread speculation surrounding their wedding date is that the two want to get married on New Year's Eve, even though it would mean that Josiah and Lauren would make for an abnormally long Duggar courtship.
Recently, a source close to the family came forward and revealed that the couple is set to tie the knot this summer itself, possibly as early as July.
But what's interesting about Lauren and Josiah's courtship is that there's no guess of what this rebellious couple is up to. But it would definitely make for an interesting watch for fans since it has been quite a long time since people saw a Duggar romance stir up this much trouble and scandal in a long time!
