Longtime HGTV viewers may wonder whatever happened to the Hatmakers from My Big Family Renovation! Well, the answer is messier than you might have expected from the wholesome-on-the-surface family... Jen Hatmaker and her hubby Brandon first gained fame in the mid-2010s as a "cool" religious family, something that almost demanded they get their own reality show. And they did, doing home renovations at first for themselves and then for others. However, the series was short-lived. And the marriage didn't last much longer after that either... In 2020, Jen revealed to her fans that after 26 years of marriage they were getting a divorce. She called it "completely unexpected" in her social media announcement at the time. Video: Nina Dobrev & Zac Efron Were Flirting YEARS Before Her Breakup Now, five years later, we're learning just how big a shock Jen actually got. She learned her pastor husband Brandon was cheating on her! And the way she found out is like every spouse's nightmare! Contents [hide] 1 The Whisper 2 The Breakup 3 Leaving The Church 4 Brandon's Response The Whisper In her new memoir Awake, coming out on Tuesday, the former reality star reveals the exact moment she got the gut punch. She was woken up in the middle of the night to hear the words: "I just can't quit you." But Brandon wasn't speaking to her. The evangelical church leader was texting his mistress. The whispered words were a voice text. He was drunk and amorously whispering to another woman. While he lay in his bed next to the wife he thought was asleep. In an interview about the upcoming book, Jen told The NY Post she spent the next four hours investigating, going through his computer and following the "trail of betrayal." That trail revealed an affair that had lasted a "devastating time span." JFC, we can't even imagine! View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jen Hatmaker (@jenhatmaker) Not only had the pastor been screwing around for a long time, he'd spent a lot of money on this affair, too - buying his mistress "expensive and lavish gifts." The Hatmakers may have been successful, but they also had FIVE kids! Brandon's reckless spending on his girlfriend threw the whole family into "financial chaos." Oof. The Breakup Jen was 46 years old, the mother of five kids, and a beacon of Christianity and morality for thousands of fans... And her pastor husband had thrown away their marriage behind her back. She told the outlet of her shocking discovery: "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." She continued: "It was so shocking and stunning, and I almost could not process it. I couldn't even cry." After everything she saw that morning she knew what she had to do - she kicked out Brandon when he woke up. And she tried to figure out how to move on, with one less husband, with a LOT less money than she'd thought... all while raising five kids during a pandemic: "I did not know if I was ever going to be happy again." In her book, Jen writes about how the couple had problems before this - and in fact didn't have sex for two whole years. But they were working on it, going to therapy: "I thought that we were deeply working to repair... 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." There were red flags, of course - she just didn't see them until she already knew the truth and looked back: "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." She wrote that Brandon never even tried to make excuses or beg forgiveness - he made "no reconciliation effort" whatsoever, telling her "that 'trying requires certain feelings to be there' and they aren't anymore and they won't be coming back." Sounds like he was ready to move on with the mistress anyway. A year later, he was engaged. Leaving The Church Innerestingly, this whole thing has turned Jen off of church - something that had been the foundation of her entire public persona. While she's still religious, she said when she set foot in a church after experiencing the worst betrayal of her life at the hands of a pastor, she "found the environment so triggering" she couldn't go back: "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." Jen explained to the Post that she'd always been part of the church. Her father was a minister, too. She'd gotten married when she was just 19 - to a man studying to be pastor. And that culture - where the men are the leaders and "women are essentially the support staff" - was all she knew. She'd always held progressive views for someone from such a conservative space - she supported LGBT rights and was pro-choice. But