HGTV star Jen Hatmaker didn’t shy away from any tough topics in her memoir — including the moment she caught her husband with another woman.
In her new book, Awake, Jen recalls waking up at 2 a.m. in July 2020 to hear her husband of 26 years, Brandon Hatmaker, whispering on the phone with someone else.
“I just can’t quit you,” she heard him say before he fell asleep, according to The New York Post.
Jen, 51, said that was “the end of” her life as she knew it. “To some degree, I almost disassociated,” she told the outlet. “It was so outside the realm of what I would have ever considered a possibility for our life, our marriage, our story.”
Jen went through her husband’s computer that same night and discovered a “trail of betrayal.” Her book claims the affairs went on for a “devastating time span,” with Brandon allegedly buying his girlfriends “expensive and lavish gifts” that put their family into “financial chaos.”
Their marriage ended the next morning after Jen threw him out of their home.
“It was so shocking and stunning, and I almost could not process it,” Jen told The New York Post. “I couldn’t even cry. I did not know if I was ever going to be happy again.”
Learning about the infidelity made Jen reconsider other aspects of her life, including her religion. She and Brandon founded Austin New Church, but Jen ultimately became disillusioned with the institution.
“Inside of that culture, the men are the leaders,” she explained. “They are the pastors. They are the leaders of the family, of the marriage. They are the spiritual authorities. And the women are essentially the support staff.”
Jen married Brandon, who was studying to be a pastor, when she was 19. They expanded their family with five kids and later appeared on HGTV’s My Big Family Renovation. According to Jen, the pair struggled off screen — and didn’t have sex for two years before their split.
“I thought that we were deeply working to repair,” she told The Post about going to marriage counseling with Brandon. “We had kind of reconnected sexually … And so there, at the very bitter end, I thought that we were trying, but we actually weren’t.
She continued: “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.”
Jen claimed Brandon made “no reconciliation effort” with her before getting engaged to another woman the next year. “He [told] me clearly that ‘trying requires certain feelings to be there’ and they aren’t anymore and they won’t be coming back,” she writes in her memoir.
Jen’s book explores not only her personal life but also her complicated relationship with religion.
“I found the environment so triggering,” she said. “I had to bear the weight of everyone else’s shock, their sadness and even worse, their pity. I just couldn’t handle it. … I am not saying that I will ever go back to church, but I am also not saying that I will never go back to church. Right now, I am finding a meaningful faith outside of those [traditional] spaces.”
The TV personality is currently dating Tyler Merritt. She became a grandmother in August. Brandon, meanwhile, publicly addressed Jen’s accusations in a statement on Monday, September 22.
“We are all bigger than our lowest moment. For those of us living in the consequences of our actions, that can be a hard sell. While I know this truth in my head, I still struggle today to really believe it – for myself – in my heart,” he wrote via Substack. “The lowest moment of my life was my very public affair five years ago. I caused so much pain, so much humiliation, and I brought so much confusion into the lives of many people that I loved. It was the culmination of a three-year personal spiral in which I had lost my anchor, felt no hope, and was the loneliest I’ve ever been in my life.”
Brandon said it has been hard to “relive it today.”
“I’ve owned my mistakes, I’ve made amends, I continue to do the work, I’ve worked hard to restore relationships, and I’ve started over,” he continued. “I too often choose not to stand up for myself out of fear of it coming across as making excuses. There are no excuses. But I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to have an affair. I didn’t fall out of love overnight. Our love was coming to a slow and painful ending. And I privately mourned the death of our marriage years before our divorce.”
The pastor used his post to shut down some misconceptions. “Jen has every right to share her piece of the story. I don’t blame her for that,” he added. “ I’m not saying what she wrote is untrue. I’m saying that what’s left unsaid isn’t her responsibility to tell. The only one who can do that, is me.”
Awake is available Tuesday, September 23.