Jana Duggar is unlucky in love — but she’s not ready to throw in the towel just yet.
“I used to be a little more strict,” the 30-year-old said about dating on the Tuesday, September 15, episode of TLC’s Counting On. “I felt like, I just want to find someone that would either move to Arkansas, or is already from here, but I think as time has gone on, I’ve found I do love to travel more than I thought I did. So now, it’s more like, ‘OK, if I really love the guy, I’ll follow him to the ends of the earth. I’ll want to go wherever he is.’ So far I just haven’t found that one.”
Though several of her siblings have already tied the knot, Duggar is still waiting for Mr. Right. Despite the stigma she faces about being single at her age in her conservative Christian community, the reality star isn’t standing for the criticism.
“I feel like these days, probably one of the most common questions is, ‘Am I in a relationship?'” she explained. “Sometimes it gets a little old. … Some people are like, ‘Are you picky?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t think so.'”
Duggar admitted that she sometimes feels like her peers think there’s “something majorly wrong” with her, but she realized that her long journey to finding The One could be a blessing in disguise.
“Not everyone’s lives look the same, and so yes, I could be depressed,” she said on Tuesday’s episode. “But I have to keep telling myself, ‘No, this is what God has planned out,’ and you know … if the right one had come along, I would have been married a long time ago. But I just don’t think that it’s been God’s timing yet, and I’ve been able to accomplish a lot of other things that maybe I wouldn’t have had I been married.”
Earlier this year, Duggar opened up about her love life in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly and said that she was trying to “make the most” of her single status before settling down.
“I’m not that worried,” she said in July. “Yes, I long to be married and one day I think that will come, but I think … if I sit there and I’m like, ‘Oh, no, I’m not married’ and just all worried about it, it makes things way worse.”
While she hasn’t found her soulmate yet, Jana explained that she was grateful to have her parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, as an example of what lifelong love looks like.
“They’re quick to forgive and to make, really try to make things right,” Jana told Us of the couple, who tied the knot in 1984 and share 19 children. “The genuine love that they still have for one another … this young love and they still have that, you know, today. I think that’s rare to see couples that are their age and been married that long.”
