Joy-Anna Duggar & Austin Forsyth Admit They Broke Jim Bob’s Courtship Rules

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When it comes to dating one of Jim Bob Duggar‘s daughters, we’ve heard plenty about just how strict his courtship rules can be. Because the children of the family date with the intent to marry the person they’re courting, Jim Bob thoroughly vets any man who has been interested in one of his girls – and even once they get his seal of approval, they have to follow his guidelines. But now, Austin Forsyth is coming clean: He and Joy didn’t follow those rules quite as closely as her dad would have liked.

Austin appeared on Jinger and Jeremy’s podcast this week.

While talking with his sister- and brother-in-law, Austin opened up about courting Joy-Anna in the early days of their relationship – something he wasn’t too familiar with, because it wasn’t the way his family did things, despite the fact that they were also pretty conservative. But because his family had been close with the Duggars for years, he did know that this was the way they did things, and he was willing to give it a shot.

That meant that all of his dates with Joy were chaperoned, though, and that’s when they ended up bending the rules.

Justin chaperoned most of Joy and Austin’s dates.

They still found a way to get one-on-one time together if they wanted to have a private conversation, however, even though that was technically against the rules.

“We’d tell Justin to go sit in the truck,” he said, later adding, “I’d be like, ‘hey we’re going to talk. You go over there, Justin. You go in the next room or whatever.”

Fortunately, because Justin already knew Austin from their families interacting and had a level of trust and respect, he’d go along with it.

Fans have a lot of thoughts about Austin’s confession.

Fans on a popular Duggar-related subreddit have been discussing this part of the podcast, and they seem to appreciate the confirmation about the broken rules.

“I am not saying they broke all the rules, but this seems to confirm what some of us believe: that they did more than hold hands prior to marriage,” the OP wrote.

One commenter wrote, “Glad Austin didn’t mention this until after Justin got out of the house. Justin’s probably getting an angry phone call from JB right about now.”

This isn’t the first time Joy and Austin have admitted to breaking a courtship rule.

When Joy appeared on the Unplanned podcast in October 2024, she admitted that she broke the rule about no hand holding and no full hugs before engagement after Austin totaled his truck in an accident that was so bad “he could have died.”

“Well, my brother that comes with my dad is like, ‘Pops, Joy has been holding onto Austin’s arm this whole time. And they’re courting. They’re not even supposed to be holding hands,’” Joy said. “And Pops looks back kind of like annoyed. He’s like, ‘You should probably let go of his arm.’ And I’m like looking at my brother like so annoyed. But I was like, whatever, it’s fine.”