Jen Affleck is being unusually direct about the state of her marriage right now — and she’s doing it while pregnant with her fourth baby and midway through filming an entirely new show.
In an interview with People published Thursday, the “Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” star said that she and husband Zac have “a lot that we’ve been navigating behind closed doors.” Which is a sentence that hits a little differently when you remember how much of this particular marriage has already been handed over to a camera crew.
And then, in the same breath, the counterweight: “I wouldn’t have survived the first trimester without him,” she told the outlet.
Both things at once. Which is, frankly, the most honest description of a hard year in a marriage we’ve gotten out of a reality star in a long time.
A Move, a Spinoff, and a Surprise Baby No. 4
Quick catch-up if you’ve lost the thread. Jen, 27, is on the cast of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives: Orange County — the new Hulu spinoff that was announced in the spring and is currently wrapping its first season. She and Zac moved the whole family from Utah to California to do it. Nora is 4, Luca is 3, and Penelope just hit 1.
Somewhere in the middle of this huge move for their whole family, she found out she was pregnant again.
The First Trimester Was Genuinely Rough
About three weeks into living in their new home, she got an infected wisdom tooth. That meant surgery, and with the anesthesia and pain-management options that become more limited for a pregnant person. All layered in with the nausea she was already fighting.
She’s also been open about prenatal depression. People reports that she shared on Instagram that her mind went to “some really dark places” during that first trimester, and that the experience scared her.
That’s when Zac stepped in. She told People she was too sick to show up for her kids the way she normally would, so he carried on for the family for both of them.
Bravo and Cocktails Take
Here’s the part we keep circling back to.
“Behind closed doors” is a choice of phrase. It tells you there’s something going on without handing over a single detail. And this is what tells us this will be a storyline. Jen Affleck has learned from being a reality star and she’s learned how to drum up interest for her next season.
Season one made their marriage the plot. Now she’s moved states, joined a new cast, and the marriage came with her as the plot. We highly doubt she got to renegotiate her role by coming on the show. Her marriage will be fair game for the show.
The part we’d actually like to see protected is the prenatal depression. Prenatal and postpartum depression are common, treatable, and still weirdly taboo to say out loud. In a world where brands are canceling people for talking about prenatal and postnatal depression, Jen is showing bravery. So many women struggle with this, and the more light that can be brought to the topic, the better.
for someone who will have four children under five and suffered prenatal depression, I hope maybe she holds off on more children for a while. God bless them all.