Jill Duggar Hints at Reason for Estrangement From Dad Jim Bob: He ‘Put Me Against My Husband’

While Jill Duggar once looked to her dad, Jim Bob Duggar, for his blessing, she hinted the patriarch put her in a position where she had to choose between her infamous family and her husband, Derick Dillard.

“As we paved our own path, it became very difficult for me because I realized I could not please my parents and do what I feel like we’re being called to do,” Jill, 32, said in an interview on the “Ask Dr. Julie Hanks” podcast alongside her husband on Tuesday, November 14. “I think whenever it got really toxic, is whenever I was almost forced to choose and I wouldn’t have chosen that, I wanted to please everyone.”

“I can’t,” she concluded to host Dr. Julie Hanks. “If you’re going to put me against my husband, I’m not gonna to pick you. I’m gonna to pick my husband.”

The Counting On alum explained that the first time she stood her ground with her parents was when she and Derick, 34, were already married with one child and the small brood was looking to step away from reality TV.

“We were headed in a different direction with our lives as a little family unit than the one my parents had kinda laid out for us and just assumed that we would follow,” the TLC personality continued, revealing Jim Bob, 58, saw reality TV as a “ministry opportunity.” “I didn’t want to be put in that position. But whenever I felt threatened that way, that’s when push really came to shove and I was like, ‘You’re gonna make me decide that I’m going to take this next step, and you’re not gonna like it.’”

Jill has been vocal about her strained relationship with her father and mother, Michelle Duggar, with tensions arising after she began speaking out against the family in the years following their time on the TLC shows 19 Kids and Counting and Counting On. ​​

The 19 Kids and Counting alum said Derick’s relationship with Jim Bob “used to be really great” while on the October 24 episode of the “Vulnerable” podcast, but the dynamic changed when “they started having some differences.”

Jill opened up about a recent interaction where Derick stood up to the Duggar patriarch and argued it wasn’t OK how he was treating her. “I think my dad got the picture when Derick was telling him, basically like, if you keep contacting her directly, then I will have to file a protective order,” she told host Christy Carlson Romano, adding that her husband is an attorney.

Despite admitting that their relationship with Jim Bob is currently “rocky,” Jill explained that she and Derick have hope that “things can get better.” The mom of three added, “But we’re not rushing things either with my family. We want to have good relationships. We want there to be better trust.”