Janelle has bugged the crap outta me this season. I know she's always been the analytical type...but DAMN! Between her hyper-analyzing any and EVERYTHING in those GD therapy sessions w/Merri and her fuddy-duddy personality during Maddies shower planning...IDK...she is one odd duck. She def fits the profile of a type of ruminator (in which binge-eating, interestingly enough, is commonly associated!).
Janelle is very annoying this season. She keeps whining about how stressful it is to help with the wedding yet gives huge things to do to everyone else and we only see her eating food and watching Maddie do stuff.
It is clear the only time Janelle feels anything but numb is when she is comfort eating.
I think it was ridiculous for her to request to go fishing on the wedding day. I don't get people who defend her and say well it would be in the morning before people got up, no Maddie said on twitter her mom never fishes for a few hours. Since Janelle is so numbed out and not emotionally involved in anything in life I think Madison just wanted her mom to for once focus and be there emotionally for her, like what if she needed Janelle and called her to come help? She would be busy fishing. Completely selfish and just a way for Janelle to detach and not have to deal.
I don't think there is anything wrong with Maddie asking her mother not to fish on her wedding day, this is one of the most important days Madison will ever have and hopefully will be her only wedding ever, Janelle can sacrifice her way of checking out for one day for her daughter.
As for Janelle and Meri, Meri seems extremely difficult to deal with but this season I am starting to see that Janelle also seemed to be a big part of the problem.
Ya I was usually on Janelle's side in their little feud since Meri is so damn neurotic, but now I can definitely see where Meri was coming from!
shareIMO Janelle learned early on in that family that she needed to emotionally check out to survive. She was the 3rd wheel and had to sit alone while Meri and Kody were snuggling up together. The book they wrote verifies this. It must have been hurtful as heck to go through. No wonder she is so heavy, she obviously finds eating calming and comforting.
shareI thought of this too geeze. I don't begrudge Janelle one iota for writing Meri off so long ago. I give her HUGE props for approaching Meri to try and make amends. Meri coming back at Janelle with her rotten, nasty, self-entitled crap ("I'll have to think about it"...bcuz Janelle shut Meri down years before when Meri extended a thorn bush...errrr...'olive branch'.). Janelle had a million+ reasons not to trust her, OR her motives!
shareMeri has always seemed like a selfish and cold person to me. I agree that Janelle's wanting to be closer to Meri deserves kudos. I doubt I would be as willing to forgive years of bad feelings and bickering.
I hope Janelle has success with her new venture, and can get a handle on her weight problem. She looked so much better a few seasons ago, and she undoubtedly felt a lot better too.
I think Janelle's oddities go way back- in fact, I believe her inability to deal with any kind of emotion is perhaps one of the reasons she entered into polygamy. An intimate relationship between a married man and woman is definitely altered when said man has other wives. It allowed Janelle to be emotionally removed while at the same time have a husband and family.
Her weight problem may also be a symptom of her emotional detachment/dysfunction. She eats her feelings.
That is certainly possible. Their therapist Nancy definitely has her work cut out for her.
shareIt's pretty darn odd to choose to become the second wife of a man whose first wife is your first husband's sister. Way to make a strange situation even stranger. I don't know what her line of thinking is, maybe she really did fall head of heels for Kody but has never been able to admit it? There's a lot to Janelle that I don't think we are ever going to see or what her and Kody's real relationship is like.
I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention while watching the show because I thought Janelle wanted to go fishing on the day before the wedding when they were making those dreamcatchers so I couldn't understand why Maddie was getting so upset. Wanting to go fishing the day of your daughter's wedding is pretty strange, especially when your daughter wants you there. I can see why Maddie was mad.
The book they wrote verifies this.
I did read that Janelle did leave the family for a time, even camping out in a tepee.
Even Kody admitted that "Christine saved our bacon" and I always surmised that it meant that Christine took the pressure off of Meri and Janelle, and maybe made some kind of peace between them. I do remember Christine saying in an early episode that she always wanted to be a third wife. Not every woman wants to be a stay-at-home mom, and since Janelle's kids seem to be doing well, I don't think Janelle was wrong to work at a job she enjoyed and was good at.
even camping out in a tepee
Just because her kids are "successful" (19 and pregnant to a man 10 years older, dropped out of a college with full scholarships is now considered successful?) doesn't mean she was emotionally there enough for them or she does not have faults. It is not ok to be emotionally absent from your children's lives. No parent is perfect and it is ok to talk about what they could improve on and change.
share(19 and pregnant to a man 10 years older, dropped out of a college with full scholarships is now considered successful?)
doesn't mean she was emotionally there enough for them or she does not have faults
I would rather someone be overly involved with their children (and actually show that they care about them) than be aloof, and aloof parent is not a good parent. That is not a personal opinion, psychology shows kids need to have emotionally involved parents and since Kody is barely around and doesn't care Janelle needed to be more emotionally there and she is just checked out.
Children are the ones that lose to an aloof parent but the parent wins because it is easier so what you are suggesting is that the child loses and the parent can be free to be lazy. If you want to be a lazy parent don't even bother having kids, it isn't for people like that.
Nothing wrong with caring for your kids and being involved in their lives and knowing what is going on, that is called good parenting.
I would rather someone be overly involved with their children (and actually show that they care about them) than be aloof
That is not a personal opinion, psychology shows kids need to have emotionally involved parents
Nothing wrong with caring for your kids and being involved in their lives and knowing what is going on, that is called good parenting.
If you want to look at parenting styles, the Brown's are like a laboratory of different parenting styles. On one hand we have Janelle who is more hands off and aloof, but has created amazing kids.
On the other side we have Meri and Christine, who are both helicopter moms, that created Mariah and Mykelti.
If I was auditioning women for the job of Mom based on the kids they raised, I would pick Janelle.
I agree completely with everything you have said.
Meri, particularly, was in my thoughts. She barely gave Mariah a chance to breathe independently, and, my word, isn't that going well! Even before the catfishing stuff, Meri was a wreck when Mariah went to college, because Meri hadn't allowed herself to develop any real external interests.
Meri's style of parenting probably has not been healthy for her, but it seems Mariah is actually doing well, aside from not being able to forgive Meri yet for the catfishing scandal.
We must remember that even children from the same parents, raised in the same environment, can have very different personalities. Aspyn and Mykelti seem to be opposites, and I don't think it's fair to "blame" Christine for Mykelti's personality.
"Two gin and Frescas"
"Shaken, not ridiculed"
Actually, in that last post, what I was really referring to is the effect that being an over-involved parent has actually had on Meri. She seems to have carried empty-nest syndrome to a very high level, and had spent little time on nurturing (eek, what a cliched word) herself or her own interests.
Mariah seems to be doing well, and is actually trying to cut the apron strings. To be quite honest, I am a lot older than Mariah, and have no idea of how I would have reacted to my mother if she had found herself in the same situation in which Meri is. I can only speculate because I know my mother would never have been in that situation, largely because she was a very reserved person. However, I sort of wonder if that was the "straw that broke the camel's back" for Mariah and that there is something else involved to which we are not privy. Heavens knows what it could be since their lives are spread out everywhere for our delectation.
Mariah seems to be doing great so that makes no sense, I guess Meri must have done something right then so your arguments fails against you. Typically it does when you are wrong.
Lets see here, Mariah is in college doing great, has a job and is really starting to mature.
Maddie got married at 19 to someone a lot older, left college and is now pregnant less than a year after marriage. Logan may seem like a great person but he has pushed away from the family and doesn't want anything to do with their religion or them pretty much. Probably because he had to be yet another parent to all of the children and that is not healthy for a child to have to act as a parent. Also Janelle had the two worst behaved sons in the family, Garrison and Gabe. So yea I don't think Janelle's method of parenting worked out too well there. Perhaps some more attention and emotion would have helped them. The other poster is correct and psychology does not lie.
And don't give me well Janelle's two sons are in the Army, just because you join the army it does not make you a good person. Any success her kids had are in spite of her not because of her.
Mykelti clearly lacked attention given from either parent and has always been trying to figure out who she was, perhaps some more attention from her father and family would have helped, like I don't know allowing her to move back in when she asked and Christine said "no", yea that worked out well because had she moved back in she probably would not be marrying at such a young age.
Again your argument fails in so many ways.
Mariah has a job? For the last three summers she has worked at a FroYo shop, while laying around on her mother's couch. I agree she appears to be doing well in school; however I question her maturity level.
mariah @mariahlian Dec 8
night number 2 of watching harry potter until 2:30 in the morning instead of studying for finals🤘🏻
I said there has to be a villain parent every season - this was Janelle's season.
shareYes fro yo is a Jon. No one said career, it's the kind of job many college students work in the summer between school years. Now if she graduates university. Is living with her mother and still making frozen yogurt, then we can talk about if she is successful. As for watching a movie instead of studying, she us certainly not the first student yo prospcrastinate. It's where all nighters come from
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I don't know, don't really care any more. My never very great interest in the Browns, and their tediously dysfunctional life, is exhausted.
I've said what I think, can't be bothered with rehashing same ole, same ole.
Again your argument fails in so many ways.
Feeling like a third wheel in her marriage must have been humiliating and painful, however, those issues should have been addressed immediately. Janelle probably didn't make it known at the time that she was unhappy. Objecting and having an honest discussion between the three of them wouldn't have been an easy thing to do, but look at the alternative and the consequences it has had.
shareAbsolutely. I also think that in general, Janelle really lacks self-confidence in many areas. She may be thinking, well, I can't do (blank) as well as Meri or Christine does whatever, so I'll just let them do it. Meri especially criticized Janelle for nitpicky things early on, and it became a pattern for Janelle to check out rather than stick up for herself and tell Meri to go fly a kite. Being criticized constantly over petty stuff just wore Janelle down IMO.
shareI like Janelle so much and I feel she recognizes her shortcomings and wants to correct them, but like all the Browns, she can't find a proper direction. I can't figure out if they lack insight or they get bad advice.
shareRight Cin! I found it positively mind boggling when Janelle candidly revealed that they literally ignore one another if they happen to take out the trash or are outside of their homes at the same time. WHAT!?!?! OMG! That is AWFUL!!!!! You know darn skippy that hasn't gone unnoticed by the other family members. Cray-Cray!
shareYes, I was actually shocked by that statement! This is a close family member, someone you share a husband with and someone your child/children consider another mother, and you don't even acknowledge each other? Bizarre! At least now they will stop and chat, but still, holy crap!
"Two gin and Frescas"
"Shaken, not ridiculed"
Hi Zucca!
This last episode was an eyeopener for me. All of us have wondered for months why Janelle had obviously gained a lot of weight by the time Maddie's wedding came around. We have all speculated for years that many of the Brown women (and teenage girls) eat their feelings (for Robyn that is fillins).
It is all too obvious that the mere thought of planning the wedding threw Janelle into a tailspin and she started eating her way through worrying about planning. She became so paralyzed with worrying about planning that she didn't plan anything, she just ate her way through the months leading up to the wedding.
But then I started thinking about the dynamics of the family. Kody and Meri are both planners and schemers (and even Christine to a certain extent), Janelle is more of a doer. If Maddie had just given her a list of things to do, Janelle would have been in her element; however, the underlying expectation was that because she was the mother of the bride, she should be planning.
Maddie is a lot like her father and also Meri, she is very goal oriented and very organized. She probably should have just had Meri be the organizer for her wedding. Meri and Maddie could have handed out assignments and everyone would have been happier.
If I had been involved in this process I would have been fishing with Janelle on the Gallatin River.
As the father of one bride and a few grooms, I am glad that all I had to do was stand around and write checks.
As the father of one bride and a few grooms, I am glad that all I had to do was stand around and write checks.
Think of the man who walked you down that endless aisle, it seemed endless to him also. At the end of the aisle, you get rid of him and he is sent to sit next to your mother. His biggest role in this event (which he had no part of planning) is to recite a response to one line:
"Who gives this woman......"
His mind is screaming "Not me! This guy is a moron and my daughter is a bigger one for marrying this little putz", but he has to say politely "me."
For me the easiest wedding was the one for our second to the youngest when he married his husband. No one expected it to be a typical wedding.
I do not like weddings. There's some deal where all little girls dream about having a big wedding & walking down the aisles in a beautiful white dress and have everyone look at her. I never did that. Never. I have always thought it is a wasteful way to spend money. I'm all for a reception or a party but a wedding, no thank you. I have a joke that the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage. It's the marriage that's important, not the wedding.
shareI don't like the typical big wedding, with all the typical trappings. It almost seems like a tacky cliche to me. The big white dress, cutting of the big tiered cake, bouquets, garters, etc - nah, not for me. I had very little of that. My dress was navy blue, we carried purses instead of flowers, no bouquet/garter tossing, no ceremonial cake-cutting. Having my cousin officiate really made it seem intimate and so much more personal, and luckily the on-site chapel's aisle was not near as long as your average church.
"Two gin and Frescas"
"Shaken, not ridiculed"
You are fine with the reception just not the wedding? You do realize at least three quarters if the cost of the wedding is a reception. The ceremony is cheap, beyond the dress. If you are complaining about waist of money, complaining about the wrong half.
shareHaving a party doesn't have to cost that much money and it's not just the money part of it, but the stress that goes along with it. I don't know how many brides I've seen walking down the aisle out of it on valium. It's the idea that this is so important when it's the marriage that's important.
shareThe point is the ceremony is one the most important, it makes you married. And two the cheapest. Unless your party is for ten people at mcdonalds play place, it will be more expensive than the ceremony. There is a lot more money and stress that gies into planning the reception then the ceremony. If you she stressed out about saying I do abd paying girls license, you shouldn't be getting married.
shareReceptions have only gotten so expensive because people feel the need to go over the top with the food and decorations. It used to be buns with meat, some salad, mints, pickles and a cake as standard reception meals! Lol
I was never interested in a big wedding either. Spending so much money made no sense to me either. We got married at the courthouse with just close family and out to eat after.
My mom wanted a reception so a few weeks later had a simple one at Hoilday Inn. The meal I mention above and simple decorations. It was in December so Christmas trees and lights.
Have never regretted it....18 yrs later!
Still more expensive than the ceremony. Unless you have it caters fast good in your backyard, you are looking at thousands of dollars. I worked n college for a hotel catering, it was a dirt cheap place to have a reception. Even if you had no decor, you were looking at minimum 30/person for dinner alone. And that was the very basic catering package, as well as rentals and the room.
shareI don't think people need to spend that much especially for a basic reception. And considering what some women pay for their dresses alone, I find it hard to believe that a very simple reception would cost more than the wedding.
It used to be receptions were in the church basement served sometimes by members of the church. A very basic meal and sometimes very few or no decorations.
I don't think people need to spend that much especially for a basic reception. And considering what some women pay for their dresses alone, I find it hard to believe that a very simple reception would cost more than the wedding.
It used to be receptions were in the church basement served sometimes by members of the church. A very basic meal and sometimes very few or no decorations.
People don't need to spend that much, but unfortunately they do. The cost of the wedding itself is oftentimes the least costly. Even when you take into consideration the cost of a wedding dress, church rental, honorarium for the officiant, and tux rental, that is the far less than what people spend for receptions. The days of punch and wedding cake in the church basement are long gone.
Instead people are spending more to rent a reception center than they are to rent a church; they are serving meals that average $30 a plate; they hire a DJ or a band; and they are giving expensive gifts to the wedding party.
Even low budget weddings cost an average of $10,000 to $19,000, with the average wedding cost in the US right now being $26,000.
They only spend that much because they choose to.
shareThey only spend that much because they choose to.
Didn't mean to double post and the site won't let me delete it. I keep trying but it won't.
Out of all of our kids weddings I liked our son's wedding the most. He was married to his husband by a Jesuit priest in England. We all went to the UK for a very simple ceremony that took place in Cambridge, where our son and his partner were living at the time.
They have now been married for 13 years, with their first marriage being performed in Amsterdam. I think it was an excellent idea.
That is a cool wedding and yes it sounds expensive going to England, but I'm not against the expense so much as the expense in what I consider frivolous things. Plus my point was I don't get the idea I see on TV that every girl has been dreaming all her life to walk down the aisle in a thousand dollar dress and get a $5000 ring from prince charming. He's the same guy who cheats on her 5 years later and walks out on her and the 2 kids. I have always wished couples would think their marriage is as important as that one day. However, your son's wedding sounds perfect to me.
shareI agree. Knowing that I was marrying the right man is what made the day special and helped me sail through the more "traditional" elements
"Two gin and Frescas"
"Shaken, not ridiculed"
Absolutely! That's the way it should be. It is sad that the divorce rate is so high. I wish Mykelti and Tony well, but I think they are a statistic waiting to happen.
shareOur daughter had her ceremony at the lakefront home of my inlaws. Their property overlooks Lake Erie and has been in their family for over 125 years. My kids all grew up playing and swimming there and for her to enter into her marriage there was unbelievably meaningful and Perfect! The reception was held at the same party center that my husband and I had our reception some 30 years previously. It rained after our daughter said her vows and we all got wet, and plenty went wrong, but, it was a perfect day.
shareNow that's a great wedding!
shareSadly, too many couples plan the wedding and not the marriage.
shareAaaaand now this comment is even more on point after watching the wedding episode and hearing Janelle's terrible speech. Basically, her marriage was awful for many years, just grin and bear it, and eventually you will stop having emotions and coast on auto pilot.
She thinks married couples should hate each other after 3 years or they're being dishonest? I've been married 9 years and have never hated my spouse. We've fought, I've been angry, but never hate. Not even close. Janelle, you're in a crummy marriage, just admit it.
Janelle is in a Polygamist marriage where they don't believe in 2 people getting married because they like or even love each other because they don't have time to get to know each other. Then there's that other pesky wife hanging around. I have high hopes for Maddie and Caleb and I hope Mykelti and Tony make it. At least they all seem to be infatuated with each other and I believe Maddie and Caleb are in love. I feel so sorry for Janelle.
share