Jen Hatmaker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mark’s wife, Anna is a total fraud. It is broadly known that she cheated on her ex husband for years yet paints herself as the victim in the divorce. I know them both from college and she was always insufferable.

Am I correct that she dated Glennon's ex husband also? After sliding into his DMs, which is how she started things with Mark?
Or am I thinking of someone else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mark’s wife, Anna is a total fraud. It is broadly known that she cheated on her ex husband for years yet paints herself as the victim in the divorce. I know them both from college and she was always insufferable.

Am I correct that she dated Glennon's ex husband also? After sliding into his DMs, which is how she started things with Mark?
Or am I thinking of someone else?

Correct - I think “dating” is a stretch it was more like a fling. She will tell anyone who listens though. I can’t imagine she has any real or local “clients” as most people know about the affair and just how full of sh*t she is in general.

[Anonymous]

While there is some real honesty in her post, which, yes, is very well written - but why share this with the world? Except to gain adoration, followers, fan girls, validation of her choices and trying to remain relevant. She’s still living a life of “BS” with her me camps, decorating, shilling everything from gummies to university educations, besties, cruises where she takes center stage - it’s still all BS. Not to mention the same fake I’m good/we’re good (really)/best relationship, I’m having the best s8x ever.

Still locking into a BS life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While there is some real honesty in her post, which, yes, is very well written - but why share this with the world? Except to gain adoration, followers, fan girls, validation of her choices and trying to remain relevant. She’s still living a life of “BS” with her me camps, decorating, shilling everything from gummies to university educations, besties, cruises where she takes center stage - it’s still all BS. Not to mention the same fake I’m good/we’re good (really)/best relationship, I’m having the best s8x ever.

Still locking into a BS life.

Exactly. Jen had the absolute most precious, dearest, and most amazing life, remember? Until she didn't. And now she wants us all to know it was all bullshit.

But dear, please.

Are we all to believe that *NOW* you have THE MOST precious and dear and the most amazing post divorce recovery ever? And THE MOST amazing and spicy new love like ever?

Isn't this also just a bunch of performance bullshit too?

[Anonymous]

Same crap, different day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As much as she annoys me, I find this to be very well-written.

Agreed. This is maybe some of her best writing and it does make me want to read her book. But it's confusing that she can have this level of self-awareness about her marriage but so little about how she presents her relationship with Tyler online. It feels like she is doing the exact same thing with a new person, writing an idealized version of a dude who by all accounts seems to be an attention-seeking fame whore and commitment phobe. Brandon is a douche but at least he commits and marries up. I don't trust a 50something lifelong batchelor who never had kids suddenly becoming a committed life partner.

Ding ding ding. Like the addict who preaches deep learnings in NA and then gets high the next day. Don’t doubt she really believes some of this stuff in the moment or at least tries to but being single in her world is like being sober for an addict. Deeply disorienting and socially shamed.

[Anonymous]

Sass is undermining any attempt she is making at an authentic image. The guy as a “boyfriend” or even “partner” is a total joke and I am shocked none of her ride or dies have had an intervention

[Anonymous]

Her current relationship mirage is no different from the faux bliss of her marriage. It would be nice if that substack post were actually real and the bullshit had actually stopped. However it’s just more bullshit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone copy paste an excerpt from the Substack article?

I can't believe the pity I have for Kristen for having to deal with Mark and Anna together. I absolutely would not take ANY advice on any topic from them. They have a Hatmaker-level lack of self-awareness.

I was speaking at a huge event a few years ago. To be honest, I can’t even remember what or where it was, because the most lasting memory was the one I am about to tell you. I was deep in the bowels of the backstage labyrinth with the person assigned to “handle me.” This is either a great assignment or a shitty one, depends. In this case, my person had been in my community for years, so we were instantly connected.

She was a few years younger than me, very petite, super athletic, cute as a button. In that candid, unprotected way people who’ve chosen recovery seem to have, she told me in frank terms the story of her alcoholism. She walked me through the lengths she went to hide it, nurture it, prioritize it, manage it. She described all the ways addicts bargain with their substance: spreadsheets, rules, only weekends, only wine. It’s a deal with the devil, for sure. After breaking all her self-imposed boundaries endless times, she described the final straw.

It involved putting her young children in danger. It culminated with telling her parents an over-the-top, outrageous made up story on family vacation so she could leave her young children and party all night with an internet stranger. It all blew up in a blaze of mayhem, as these things often do. She described all this with clear-eyed candor. But I’ll never forget what she said:

“I came home, emptied my house of booze, and went to my first meeting. I joined a sober online community and ended it,” at which point she said plainly, “I finally got sick of my own bullshit.”


This is the only thing I remember from the entire trip, not even the city. It was so honest, not an ounce of defense or a hint of excuse. She had nothing to prop up anymore. She was no longer concerned with optics. She’d been to her own fiery hell and come back, and her freedom was plain to see. Her sobriety was written all over her. I am still thinking about it years later.

God, the lengths we go to protect our own bullshit. We cherish it so much. We choose it even when it is breaking our hearts, or our people, or our bodies. We lie about our relationships. We lie about our own destructive patterns. We lie about our complicity. We lie about our harmful subcultures. We lie about our churches. We lie about our addictions. We lie about our behaviors. We lie about our marriages. We lie about our desires. We lie about parenting. We lie about how great we are. We lie about how hurt we are.

We are so obsessed with wanting the version we are displaying. That is what we want. We want that marriage. We want that family. We want that woman who has her shit together. Sometimes we want the very thing that is utterly breaking us, or breaking other people, and we refuse to part with it, even as it destroys everything. The amount of secrets and private suffering women are walking around with is staggering.

I know how it works, because I’m not just a spokeswoman for denial, I’m a user. In my case, my secret was being unhappy in my marriage. Not just unhappy; disconnected, resentful, lonely, complicit. There was no more sex. There was no more joy. We were in a death spiral the final two years. Most of that confusing disintegration became clear upon discovery of the betrayal timeline, but I did nothing to interrupt its trajectory. I didn’t rattle the cages with urgency. I didn’t radically alter my responses. I didn’t engage in a meaningful, truthful way. Instead, I fantasized about some moral, acceptable ending to my marriage so I might have happiness again before I died. I daydreamed about love with another imaginary person. I kept our misery secret from everyone who loved us until the end was already inevitable.

Most importantly, I didn’t even tell myself the full truth.

I guess I wasn’t sick enough of our bullshit.

I ignored plain evidence of breach and demise (and contributed to the spiral by withdrawal) while I let the edges of my imagination invent a different life. Everything in my inner knowing was clear, but I refused my own guidance. I said no thank you, that is not the truth I am interested in facing. So I will just carry on with this broken marriage and relegate the possibility of happiness to my private imagination when it gets a few seconds alone without my micromanagement.

Beloved readers, is any of this feeling familiar? Does any of this put a pit in your stomach? Does your own secret pain or truth live tightly coiled inside your soul? In the most candid, honest version of yourself, what would you admit? Even to yourself. Forget solutions for now. Don’t fixate on consequences or next steps yet. If you were to just very plainly tell yourself the truth, not protecting your own bullshit, what would it be?

As long as you are lying to yourself, there is no hope for freedom. When we know what we know, but we refuse to face what we know, we lock ourselves up. Now of course, I am not dense enough to suggest that truth telling isn’t consequential, wouldn’t mean enormous change, even painful sacrifices - not the least of which might be your image - but if you never get sick enough of your own bullshit, then what you have is what you will always have, unless someone else sinks the ship first, like mine.

Does the fact that even with my story, even with betrayal and trauma and total collapse, I am still grateful and whole now? Isn’t that insane? Can you imagine if I’d had the courage to choose it myself and diminish the agony?? My point is this: living a lie is not better than living the truth, even if the path from A to B includes loss or change. My life and family and marriage and body was broken to the ground, and I am still better off now than I was before. The peace of freedom and honesty is that intense.

Something else interesting I’ve noticed is that once I told myself the truth (after it all crashed so what else could I do?), it became so much easier to tell the truth to others, even you. The manic dance was over, and the truth was all of a sudden less scary. There was nothing left to protect. I am suuuuper honest in Awake about my own faults and flaws, my own bad tendencies and patterns, and Sydney asked if I was anxious about including them now that you are about to read it.

Why would I want to expose my own bullshit?

I guess I finally got sick enough of it.

Tell yourself the truth, beloved community. Say it in the quiet safety of your own soul. Admit it with full candor. Let it be what it already is. Don’t defend it anymore. Stop polishing it up for public viewing. You are halfway through your life. These are your days and years, and you’ll not get one, not a single one back. What people think of you is not as consequential as what you think of you. You are the architect of the second half of your life. Build it with truth. It is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

Even her “calling herself out” is still just her positioning herself as a victim. No actual ownership of her role in anything, just that she “ignored” things, presumably things being done to her by others. Because of course she’s blameless and so much wiser than all the mere humans around her!

The writing doesn’t suck tho. It needs some editing, and it still sounds like Inspo Influencer Voice, but she hits a nice flow at points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can anyone copy paste an excerpt from the Substack article?

I can't believe the pity I have for Kristen for having to deal with Mark and Anna together. I absolutely would not take ANY advice on any topic from them. They have a Hatmaker-level lack of self-awareness.

I was speaking at a huge event a few years ago. To be honest, I can’t even remember what or where it was, because the most lasting memory was the one I am about to tell you. I was deep in the bowels of the backstage labyrinth with the person assigned to “handle me.” This is either a great assignment or a shitty one, depends. In this case, my person had been in my community for years, so we were instantly connected.

She was a few years younger than me, very petite, super athletic, cute as a button. In that candid, unprotected way people who’ve chosen recovery seem to have, she told me in frank terms the story of her alcoholism. She walked me through the lengths she went to hide it, nurture it, prioritize it, manage it. She described all the ways addicts bargain with their substance: spreadsheets, rules, only weekends, only wine. It’s a deal with the devil, for sure. After breaking all her self-imposed boundaries endless times, she described the final straw.

It involved putting her young children in danger. It culminated with telling her parents an over-the-top, outrageous made up story on family vacation so she could leave her young children and party all night with an internet stranger. It all blew up in a blaze of mayhem, as these things often do. She described all this with clear-eyed candor. But I’ll never forget what she said:

“I came home, emptied my house of booze, and went to my first meeting. I joined a sober online community and ended it,” at which point she said plainly, “I finally got sick of my own bullshit.”


This is the only thing I remember from the entire trip, not even the city. It was so honest, not an ounce of defense or a hint of excuse. She had nothing to prop up anymore. She was no longer concerned with optics. She’d been to her own fiery hell and come back, and her freedom was plain to see. Her sobriety was written all over her. I am still thinking about it years later.

God, the lengths we go to protect our own bullshit. We cherish it so much. We choose it even when it is breaking our hearts, or our people, or our bodies. We lie about our relationships. We lie about our own destructive patterns. We lie about our complicity. We lie about our harmful subcultures. We lie about our churches. We lie about our addictions. We lie about our behaviors. We lie about our marriages. We lie about our desires. We lie about parenting. We lie about how great we are. We lie about how hurt we are.

We are so obsessed with wanting the version we are displaying. That is what we want. We want that marriage. We want that family. We want that woman who has her shit together. Sometimes we want the very thing that is utterly breaking us, or breaking other people, and we refuse to part with it, even as it destroys everything. The amount of secrets and private suffering women are walking around with is staggering.

I know how it works, because I’m not just a spokeswoman for denial, I’m a user. In my case, my secret was being unhappy in my marriage. Not just unhappy; disconnected, resentful, lonely, complicit. There was no more sex. There was no more joy. We were in a death spiral the final two years. Most of that confusing disintegration became clear upon discovery of the betrayal timeline, but I did nothing to interrupt its trajectory. I didn’t rattle the cages with urgency. I didn’t radically alter my responses. I didn’t engage in a meaningful, truthful way. Instead, I fantasized about some moral, acceptable ending to my marriage so I might have happiness again before I died. I daydreamed about love with another imaginary person. I kept our misery secret from everyone who loved us until the end was already inevitable.

Most importantly, I didn’t even tell myself the full truth.

I guess I wasn’t sick enough of our bullshit.

I ignored plain evidence of breach and demise (and contributed to the spiral by withdrawal) while I let the edges of my imagination invent a different life. Everything in my inner knowing was clear, but I refused my own guidance. I said no thank you, that is not the truth I am interested in facing. So I will just carry on with this broken marriage and relegate the possibility of happiness to my private imagination when it gets a few seconds alone without my micromanagement.

Beloved readers, is any of this feeling familiar? Does any of this put a pit in your stomach? Does your own secret pain or truth live tightly coiled inside your soul? In the most candid, honest version of yourself, what would you admit? Even to yourself. Forget solutions for now. Don’t fixate on consequences or next steps yet. If you were to just very plainly tell yourself the truth, not protecting your own bullshit, what would it be?

As long as you are lying to yourself, there is no hope for freedom. When we know what we know, but we refuse to face what we know, we lock ourselves up. Now of course, I am not dense enough to suggest that truth telling isn’t consequential, wouldn’t mean enormous change, even painful sacrifices - not the least of which might be your image - but if you never get sick enough of your own bullshit, then what you have is what you will always have, unless someone else sinks the ship first, like mine.

Does the fact that even with my story, even with betrayal and trauma and total collapse, I am still grateful and whole now? Isn’t that insane? Can you imagine if I’d had the courage to choose it myself and diminish the agony?? My point is this: living a lie is not better than living the truth, even if the path from A to B includes loss or change. My life and family and marriage and body was broken to the ground, and I am still better off now than I was before. The peace of freedom and honesty is that intense.

Something else interesting I’ve noticed is that once I told myself the truth (after it all crashed so what else could I do?), it became so much easier to tell the truth to others, even you. The manic dance was over, and the truth was all of a sudden less scary. There was nothing left to protect. I am suuuuper honest in Awake about my own faults and flaws, my own bad tendencies and patterns, and Sydney asked if I was anxious about including them now that you are about to read it.

Why would I want to expose my own bullshit?

I guess I finally got sick enough of it.

Tell yourself the truth, beloved community. Say it in the quiet safety of your own soul. Admit it with full candor. Let it be what it already is. Don’t defend it anymore. Stop polishing it up for public viewing. You are halfway through your life. These are your days and years, and you’ll not get one, not a single one back. What people think of you is not as consequential as what you think of you. You are the architect of the second half of your life. Build it with truth. It is the most powerful tool at your disposal.

Even her “calling herself out” is still just her positioning herself as a victim. No actual ownership of her role in anything, just that she “ignored” things, presumably things being done to her by others. Because of course she’s blameless and so much wiser than all the mere humans around her!

The writing doesn’t suck tho. It needs some editing, and it still sounds like Inspo Influencer Voice, but she hits a nice flow at points.

Jen is either the total victim in all things. Or the total hero.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for posting the full script. It would be such a powerful reflection if she weren’t currently with Tyler. She’s literally just hopped to new BS. It’s a common BS story - leaving one dysfunction for another yet feeling self-righteous about it.

[Anonymous]

^ agree

[Anonymous]

Oh man this essay. Jen's "huge event." The "handler" who up and tells this hugely personal story to her in the bowels of the giant venue. By the way, she was petite.
And, she thought she could just remain in a sexless marriage indefinitely?

[Anonymous]

No one should be owed sex. This idea that a marriage is worthless without sex is rapey.

[Anonymous]

What is up with her multiple back to school reposts? And how she frames them as “PSAs.” 🙄 like they’re being nationally broadcast across the country.

Yep, BS life still going strong.