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Ben Affleck is speaking out in the April issue of GQ about the reasons behind his split with Jennifer Lopez.
The couple wed in 2022, broke up in 2024, and finalized their divorce this year.
Affleck explained, “There’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly… the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”
He insisted, “There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no, ‘This is what happened.’”
Instead, he says, “It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do.”
He also addressed Lopez’s 2023 documentary “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” and rumors that the way they handle fame caused a fracture in their relationship.
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Affleck said, J.Lo “handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have,” adding, “My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers.”
He went on, “As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things. And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?’ Because… I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that.”
The Oscar winner recalled in the doc that he said something like, “You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, ‘Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’ You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship.”
He pointed out, “And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.’”
In other comments about fame, he said he felt like a character in a soap opera, “You don’t write it, you don’t direct it, you don’t even know you’re in it, but you are.”
Affleck claims the reality isn’t nearly as dramatic. “My life is actually pretty drama-free. And so even if I have the same events that people have — I’m sure in your mind you’re thinking, ‘Oh, well, you just got divorced. That’s not drama-free.’ And I understand that instinct, but all of this is pretty adult and for all the sensational stuff that gets written, if somebody sat down and talked to me about it, and I said, ‘Well, this is really the experience,’ their eyes would glaze over with boredom.”
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During another portion of the interview, Ben said he’s okay talking about his personal life “a little… as long as my actual feelings and intentions and beliefs are communicated, which I hope I was clear that really [Lopez] is somebody I have a lot of respect for.”
Back in 2023, Lopez opened up to “Extra” about “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” and how she shared a book of private love letters from Ben with her musical collaborators.
She recalled, “When they started seeing what was happening and the story that was developing and how difficult it was to get made, it just seemed like the behind the scenes became something else, you know? So, they had all these pieces of things, including me kind of like showing the book to the to the producers that I was going to work with and saying, ‘We’re going to make this album. This is what it’s really about. This is the basis of it.’ And we went in the studio we wrote that song, that first song was the ‘The Greatest Love Story Never Told,’ which was inspired by that gift Ben gave me.”
Lopez has also touched on the divorce in her own interviews since the split.
In October, she spoke to Nikki Glaser for Interview magazine. The comedian asked if Jennifer had regrets after the pain she endured, but J.Lo told her, “Not one second. That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good. It almost did. But now, on the other side of it, I think to myself, ‘F**k, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, God. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a f**king sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.’”
