Photo: Maya Dehlin/Disney

After five seasons of relationship trouble documented on The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (make it six if you count Dancing With the Stars), Jen Affleck is divorcing her husband, Zac Affleck. Jen filed for separation just one week before the premiere of her new show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange Country, out on Hulu now. Throughout their time on television, Jen and Zac have had their fair share of onscreen fights, from her going to a Chippendales show in season one to debating whether to return to their LDS church in season five. Their relationship was so volatile that Jen’s fellow cast members held interventions for her to break up with Zac, appalled by how he casually he threatened her with divorce. Fans felt Zac held Jen back from her full potential on Dancing With the Stars, comparing her to Whitney Leavitt, who had unconditional support from her husband, Conner Leavitt. Zac said in season four that he felt Jen “being a wife has taken a back seat” to her career while he juggled being a stay-at-home parent in Los Angeles. By the end of each season, the couple managed to stay together and vowed to work on their marital problems. But, with a new show and a new baby on the way (earlier this year, Jen shared that she was pregnant with their fourth child), Jen’s seemingly done and even documents the final straw in their relationship on SLOMW: OC.

Note: Light spoilers ahead for the first season of SLOMW: OC.

Jen, it’s revealed, has been planning her divorce from Zac all summer. She says this to castmate Aspyn Ovard within the first 15 minutes of the premiere episode. Throughout the following episodes, Jen struggles with how to move forward with the divorce and whether it’s the right decision for her. “I was thinking a lot of what other people wanted for me, my community, my family, Zac, being Mormon,” she says in a confessional in episode three. “There’s just a lot of judgment behind divorce in the church.” (Zac doesn’t make an appearance on the show.)

When Jen visits her parents and sister in Utah to tell them she’s getting a divorce, they try to talk her out of it. She says she has been “miserable her whole marriage” with Zac and that he hasn’t “changed his behavior with finances” — Jen previously alluded to gambling issues with Zac. Jen’s sister tells her to “not focus on the money” because divorcing him would just be trading “problems for other problems.” Her mom believes that if he’s not cheating, then they should stay together. Jen later tells Bobbi Althoff, another OC castmate, that he was served papers over unpaid charges on their Arizona rental and spent over $100,000 on crypto and sports betting without her knowledge. It wasn’t the first time this happened. In earlier seasons, Jen said Zac gambled away his medical-school tuition, but then told the other women she lied; now it seems like she was just covering up for him. Zac didn’t tell her because she was already talking about separation from him, but the financial betrayal felt like the final nail in the coffin for their marriage. In the show, she eventually asks him to move out and met with a divorce lawyer to go over her options for filing.

Ahead of the show’s release, Zac released a statement on TikTok, clarifying that Jen asked for a divorce shortly after DWTS ended in November 2025. He says that he will continue to be her biggest fan and says that reality shows destroy families. Jen responded by sharing a video of him making fun of her appearance well before Mormon Wives aired. She learned a thing or two from years on reality TV: Always keep receipts.

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