It’s fair to say there are some pretty crazy cheating stories out there — the recent Coldplay kiss-cam debacle; the Shakira jam rumors; Khloé Kardashian learning of Tristan Thompson’s paternity shocker; and who could forget the salacious Scandoval? That’s just to name a few, and we can go ahead and add Jen Hatmaker to that list. The former HGTV star just revealed the moment she learned about her husband’s infidelity, and it’s a doozy.
Jen and Brandon Hatmaker starred in the HGTV series My Big Family Renovation in 2014, in which the couple — who were married in 1993 — remodeled a home for them and their five children. In her new memoir, Awake, Jen writes (via TMZ) that at 2:30 a.m., July 11, 2020, she woke up to her husband on the phone with another woman. He smelled of booze, she says, and as he drifted off to sleep, she heard him whisper into the phone:
I just can’t quit you.
Admittedly, that's brutal, and I can see why Jen Hatmaker writes in the memoir that moment changed everything for her, saying it was “the end of my life as I [knew] it.”
She writes that she got up and began digging through Brandon Hatmaker’s computer, where she found a “trail of betrayal.” Jen doesn’t specify how long the affair had been going on, only calling it a “devastating time span” in which her husband had showered his mistress with “expensive and lavish gifts” to the detriment of the Hatmakers’ finances. She kicked Brandon out in the morning.
Married for 26 years at the time, the HGTV star says she didn't she didn’t even consider the possibility that he would cheat, despite their admitted problems. That belief was because of their lives in the church, as they they co-founded New Austin Church in Texas in 2008, where Brandon Hatmaker was the pastor and Jen was a Christian author and influencer. She told the NY Post:
To some degree, I almost disassociated. It was so outside the realm of what I would have ever considered a possibility for our life, our marriage, our story. … It was so shocking and stunning, and I almost could not process it. I couldn’t even cry.
The shock wore off, however, and Jen Hatmaker says she suffered from depression and anxiety in the months that followed, overwhelmed with money issues and trying to raise her five kids on her own during the pandemic. She said she didn’t know if she was ever going to be happy again.
Time has seemingly given her a little clarity on the situation, as she admitted their marriage “had been in trouble.” They didn’t have sex for two years and had just started marriage counseling two months before Jen overheard that late-night phone call. She recalled:
There were a lot of unaccounted absences, and the phone was never ever, ever, ever out of his hand or sight. All the warning signs were there, but I did not want to face those.
In the years that followed, Jen Hatmaker walked away from the church she and Brandon started together, and she has since found love again. You can read more about her life-altering night and the events that led her to where she is today in Awake, which is available now.
While her HGTV series isn’t available to stream, fire up your HBO Max subscription to find other home renovation shows, and check out our 2025 TV schedule to see when to catch new seasons of your favorites.
