Jinger Duggar‘s husband, Jeremy Vuolo, is opening up about a challenging time in the early days of the pair’s marriage.

During the Wednesday, July 30, episode of the “Jinger & Jeremy Podcast,” the couple sat down with Lydia Plath and her husband, Zac Wyse, who shared their whirlwind love story with listeners in a two-part interview. As the conversation concluded, Vuolo, 37, reflected on facing pressure from people outside of his relationship with Duggar, 31.

“There was a time in our life, very early on in our marriage, where we experienced some — I describe it as deep betrayal,” he recalled. “You have relationships in your life that ground you, and when those shake or are removed, you feel like, ‘What am I doing?’”

Vuolo remembered consulting a pastor throughout the pair’s hardship. “This was a moment when we were both very deeply unsettled, where it was like, we both felt that shaking,” he continued. “And I’ll never forget what [the pastor] said. … He said, ‘Jeremy, I think the Lord’s teaching you how to walk alone.’ And not alone like me away from her or us from the Lord, but the two of us having to be dependent upon Him.”

Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo‘s love story may have been a whirlwind — but their connection is undeniably strong. The couple were introduced through Jinger’s sister Jessa Duggar and her husband, Ben Seewald, who met the former soccer star in Texas before he visited the Duggar family in Arkansas. Jinger reflected on the early days […]

According to the podcast host, it was “the first time” he’d shared the story so openly. He noted that it occurred around eight years prior — and had nothing to do with either of their families.

“It was people in my life that [Jinger] had come into and people I had been really, like, excited for her to meet and engage with,” Vuolo explained. “And then it was like, it was really difficult. … But now, looking back eight years later, we’re in our ninth year of marriage and we’re going, ‘Oh man, those were the greatest lessons we’ve ever learned.’ Like, ‘This is the greatest thing that could have ever happened to us.’”

Vuolo and Duggar tied the knot in 2016 and share three children: daughters Felicity, 6, and Evangeline, 4, and son Finn, 4 months. Duggar said that working through those challenges as newlyweds was a “huge” turning point in the duo’s relationship.

“We were able to draw closer to each other and … we felt so close throughout our relationship [and] early marriage, but that was a deepening and a whole different level when you walk through pain and hardship together,” she said on Wednesday.

The twosome have previously been candid about adjusting to their first year of marriage, and Vuolo noted on the podcast that being on reality TV may have played a role.

“We looked back on our first year and thought, ‘That was really incredible,’ but actually, there were a ton of challenges,” he said. “And a lot of them were assaults from the outside. And it was like, ‘OK, we didn’t expect to be in a war zone,’ but we got to bunker down and we get to bunker down with each other.”

Jinger Duggar grew up in front of the camera on 19 Kids and Counting, but the process began to change with her now-husband, Jeremy Vuolo, in the mix. “Early days, first meals together, making small talk, the process of getting to know someone can feel a little awkward. But I would say that there’s probably […]

Vuolo said the challenges only made him and Duggar stronger. “Literally, coming back from our honeymoon, we walked into — and this again, was a situation in Texas, in my situation — we walked into, like, a war zone immediately,” he added. “We’re like, ‘What? Didn’t expect that.’ … But things like that drew us closer and accelerated that growth as well.”

Sharing some words of wisdom for Plath and Wyse, who tied the knot in February, Vuolo said that the key to a happy marriage is “choosing to love one another every day.”

“Life is gonna get hard and there are gonna be things that threaten your marriage, and there are gonna be moments where you don’t feel the way you feel, but that’s not what love is,” he said. “Love is dictated by a decision.”