Eric Decker called out for 'bullying' Jessie James Decker in Instagram video
Singer and reality star Jessie James Decker shared a video on her Instagram from the early days of her relationship with Tennessee Titans player Eric Decker — and it raised issues about boundaries with her now husband.
In the clip, a smiling Eric is seen dragging a screaming and laughing Jessie along the side of a boat as she’s hanging on wherever she can. She’s obviously not truly upset, but she also clearly does not want to go into the water.
She admits as much in her caption.
“Only been dating a few months and you see the questionable loyalty…” she wrote. “I didn’t wanna go in and my siblings and parents all turned against me for Erics benefit!!!”
A post shared by Jessie James Decker (@jessiejamesdecker) on Jul 16, 2018 at 1:15pm PDT
For the most part, her fans responded to the video with positive comments, saying the couple are “goals.” But a few weren’t impressed with Eric and called out the fact that he blatantly disrespected Jessie’s wishes.
“Not very nice!” wrote one.
Another wrote, “Trust is everything.”
“It [the video] made me really uncomfortable,” Karin Anderson Abrell, author of Single Is the New Black, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “My concern is that when someone is clearly saying no — and I’m not pushing this into something it’s not, but even if someone is tickling you and you’re saying no — when you come together as a couple, you have to respect each other’s boundaries.”
“Honestly, I would dump him on the spot,” Abrell adds. “He’s bullying his girlfriend to get a laugh from the family.”
The issue, she notes, is that Eric seems to be more concerned with fun than with what Jessie wanted. “The boundary violation is my concern here. This is a small example and everyone is laughing, but in other realms, when it’s my way over yours, it indicates a lack of concern for her feelings and her boundaries in the relationship.”
And why is that a problem in a relationship? Because it places one person’s needs above the other’s in a situation that shouldn’t require a compromise. It’s one thing to compromise for the greater good, but in this case, as Abrell asks, “what’s the greater good for the relationship? In this case, there is no reason. There’s no greater good.”
If you’re feeling pushed to do things you don’t want in your relationship, Abrell says it’s smart to consider that “compromise should be mutually beneficial. Am I in a space where I’m compromising too much?”
The Deckers are married with three children now, and presumably they’ve worked out any differences about boundaries and who gets thrown into the lake.
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:
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