Ben Affleck breaks silence on Jennifer Lopez divorce: ‘Embarrassing’

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Ben Affleck is speaking out for the first time about the end of his marriage to Jennifer Lopez.

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In a new interview with GQ magazine published this week, Affleck, 52, pulled back the curtain on their relationship saying he has “nothing but respect” for Lopez and revealing that there was no single event or big blowup that lead to their split.

“There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue,” he told the publication. “The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do. And as you get older, this is true for me, I assume it’s true for most people, there is no ‘So-and-so did this’ or ‘This was the big event.’”

Affleck, who is fiercely private about his personal life, admitted that there is “a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something,” but said the reasons their marriage soured “is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”

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The Good Will Hunting star added that speaking about their ordinary breakup in great detail “feels vulnerable.”

“It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which — you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing,” he said.

How Affleck and Lopez managed their intense level of fame was one of the reasons cited for their separation. Their differing approaches to dealing with life in the spotlight were highlighted in her 2024 documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told. But the Air director and star said that how they coped with the pressures of stardom “wasn’t the cause of some major fracture.”

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“There are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them,” he shared. “My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things.”

He continued, “I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, ‘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. 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.’”

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Affleck told GQ that he appeared in the documentary because he “thought it was an interesting examination” into how someone of Lopez’s stature controlled their public image.

But speaking to fellow actor Kevin Hart last year on his Hart to Heart show, the two-time Academy Award-winner recalled an instance when he and Lopez ventured out into Times Square in New York City as they made their way to a Broadway show. As soon as they were out amongst the public, the couple, who were with their five children, were beset upon by fans. 

“We get out of the car, we were going to a play, and I was like, ‘F*** it, babe, we’re going to be late, we gotta walk a block and a half.’ (Lopez) was like, ‘Alright,’ she didn’t say s***,” he said.

“We get out with her, all the kids, through Times Square, and the s*** was like f***in’ bananas,’“ he recalled. 

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Affleck and Lopez started dating after they met on the set of Gigli and the pair was engaged from 2002 to 2004. Dubbed “Bennifer,” the twosome’s romance was tabloid fodder highlighted by glitzy movie premieres and a 6.1-carat pink diamond engagement ring.

But the couple called off their wedding at the last minute in 2003 and ended their relationship a few months later.

After their breakup, Lopez moved on with Marc Anthony, with whom she shares two children, while Affleck married Jennifer Garner and became a father to three. Both unions ended in divorce.

The former flames rekindled their old romance in April 2021 after Lopez broke off her engagement with retired baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez.

In her Prime Video documentary, The Greatest Story Never Told, Lopez recalled the pressure they both faced being a young power couple in the public eye.

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“Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding,” Lopez said in the film. “We had a big wedding planned – 14 ushers and bridesmaids, and three days before we just crumbled under the pressure.”

Speaking with Nikki Glaser for Interview magazine in October, newly-single Lopez, who filed for divorce from Affleck last August after two years of marriage, said that being comfortable in her own skin is the “most important thing.”

“I’m not looking for anybody, because everything that I’ve done over the past 25, 30 years, being in these different challenging situations, what can I f***ing do when it’s just me flying on my own … what if I’m just free?” she said.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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