When HGTV star Jen Hatmaker learned about her husband's affair, she quickly knew the relationship was over. "Instinctively, I knew this marriage is over, and this is so hard to say, but I had to get to it," Jen, 51, shared on the September 9 episode of "The Jamie Kern Lima Show" podcast. "I didn't want to stay married. When your spouse creates such an alternative life for himself and abandons everything - his own character and will and story and marriage and family and place in the world - there are red flags. Something is wrong. That's not the product of a healthy, functioning marriage." When looking back on her relationship with her now-ex-husband, Brandon Hatmaker, Jen admits her marriage wasn't as strong as it should have been. "There were so many parts of our marriage that have left us both lonely, disconnected, functioning as roommates," she explained to host Jamie Kern Lima. "This is the most disastrous, catastrophic, painful thing I've ever experienced, and at the same time, I also didn't want to stay. I knew it." HGTV's Jen, Brandon Hatmaker's Relationship Timeline Before Cheating Claims In her new book, titled Awake: A Memoir, Jen writes about the moment she caught her then-husband being unfaithful. In the early morning hours of July 11, 2020, Jen claimed she woke up to the sound of her husband of 26 years whispering on the phone to another woman. Their marriage ended the next morning after Jen kicked him out of their home. Jamie Kern Lima The Jamie Kern Lima Show/YouTube "In those earliest days of just mayhem - absolute mayhem - and it was COVID and July of 2020, so we were isolated and hurting collectively," Jen recalled in her podcast interview. "We were cut off from our sources of community and comfort. We were already pretty tender and bruised." When asked if she ever considered staying in the relationship, Jen said no. "I can absolutely understand the instinct to go, 'What if we patched it up enough so that it could function OK, put it in a drawer and shut it.' I get the impulse," she said. "It's interesting to look back at what I did and how I responded instinctively. That's all I had. I wasn't being strategic." On September 22, Brandon, 53, broke his silence on Jen's cheating allegations. In a statement posted to Substack, the My Big Family Renovation star expressed regret for some of his past actions. Jen Hatmaker Courtesy of Jen Hatmaker/Instagram "The lowest moment of my life was my very public affair five years ago," he wrote. "I caused so much pain, so much humiliation and I brought so much confusion into the lives of many people that I loved." In a separate Substack post one week later, Brandon said, "I won't be addressing the details of those events any longer. I've said what needed to be said, and now it's time to close that chapter." Who Is HGTV's Jen Hatmaker's Boyfriend? What to Know After Brandon Divorce Brandon is currently married to Tina Hatmaker, while Jen sparked a romance with boyfriend Tyler Merritt. While her divorce may be the hot topic of conversation as she celebrates her book release, Jen assured fans that she's "so grateful for my life right now." "I'm stunned at the joy that I've discovered," she said on the podcast. "I didn't know I was going to be happy. I didn't know I could write my own way out."