What late-night moment led to Jen Hatmaker’s marriage falling apart?

Jen Hatmaker says that one night changed everything in her 26-year marriage. She writes about this moment in her new memoir, Awake. She calls this moment the breaking point. As she explains, nothing between her and her husband, Brandon Hatmaker, would be as it once was.

Jen recalled waking up around 2:30 AM on July 11, 2020, from a deep sleep to Brandon Hatmaker whispering into his phone. She only heard him say, "I just can't quit you." She claimed he had only been talking to another woman and was intoxicated.

Jen reported that she could smell alcohol on him while she lay in bed, stunned and confused. She recalls thinking that her whole life was breaking apart. That night marked a point where she felt she could not ignore problems anymore.

What did Jen Hatmaker discover after waking up?

After hearing the whisper, Jen Hatmaker says she spent the next four hours digging through her husband’s computer. She says she found what she calls a “trail of betrayal.” She found proof of an affair, messages, and evidence of gifts that her husband brought for the other woman. Some of those gifts, she says, were expensive enough to create financial problems for her family.

By morning, Jen Hatmaker told Brandon to leave their home in Texas. She says she confronted him because she wanted the full truth. He refused to do so, and he offered no real effort to try to fix things. She asked him to pack up and go.

Jen writes that the marriage had already been in trouble before that night. She says they had not been intimate for two years and that they had started marriage counselling earlier in 2020. But she feels that the problems were deeper than what counseling could fix. She says there were warning signs she ignored.

Aftermath and how things changed?

After that night, Jen Hatmaker says many things changed in her life. She began dealing with big emotions: betrayal, grief, guilt, and shame. She says she felt lost and did not even fully know how their finances worked. She was raising their five children mostly on her own, during a pandemic, while dealing with anxiety and depression.

She also says that within a year, her husband was engaged to another woman. There was no real reconciliation, and no strong attempt was made to restore what was broken. Jen Hatmaker writes that she cut her ties to the church they had built together. She began to rebuild her life on her own.

Hatmaker's memoir is about more than just the end of a marriage. It is about waking up, about seeing truths she had not seen, and about finding her voice and knowing who she is after the loss. She wants people to understand that sometimes what looks like perfection can hide deep cracks.

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