Ben Affleck is finally opening up about his divorce from Jennifer Lopez!
In a new cover story for GQ out on Tuesday, the actor reflected on the misconceptions surrounding his messy split from J.Lo. As Perezcious readers know, Bennifer 2.0 got back together in 2021 after a romance two decades ago. They quickly got married in two ceremonies and everything was going super well — until it wasn’t. The pop star filed for divorce in August 2024 after tons of breakup rumors swirled, and they finally settled the split in January.
Related: Wait, Even DREW BARRYMORE Gets Ghosted After Dates??
There was a lot of speculation about what could’ve torn up the relationship, and fans honed in on Jennifer’s documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which was about their marriage and her new album inspired by their romance.
While the Good Will Hunting star made the movie, he seemed really unhappy about it in the actual doc. In a now infamous confessional, the Air director even acknowledged he didn’t think he and his wife were a very compatible pair because of their dramatically different preferences on fame. He wanted to keep things super private, but she couldn’t help being public — and eventually he caved. Yeesh, right?!
While this has seemingly been an issue in their relationship since the very start, Ben insists this wasn’t the main reason for the breakup. He reflected on the doc:
“Part of it was, ‘Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination. Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. 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. And so I thought, Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that? Because exactly what you said is true. I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that. And 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.’”
Later, he noted that he doesn’t mind discussing his “personal life” to an extent, but hoped his words were not misconstrued, especially when it comes to his ex-wife:
“I hope I was clear about, when you asked me about Jen and the documentary and I talked about that and my sort of personal life a little bit, which I don’t mind doing as long as my actual feelings and intentions and beliefs are communicated, which I hope I was clear that really this is somebody I have a lot of respect for.”
In fact, The Accountant star doubled down on the fact that J.Lo’s love of the spotlight had NOTHING to do with the divorce:
“I get wanting to divine or explore the kind of differences in perspective that we have in terms of how a person feels comfortable approaching the line between public and private life. But I really hope that whatever you use doesn’t suggest that I have any negativity or judgment or anything regarding that. I have nothing but respect.”
Sweet! The father of three also had no hard feelings about folks trying to get to the bottom of the split — but he made clear there’s no big drama (that he’ll spill the tea on anyway), adding:
“I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”
Without referencing any specific internet theories about the split — which have continued this month after his cozy sighing with Jennifer Garner — Ben went on to deny any rumors of a blowout “scandal,” elaborating:
“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.’ 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.’ 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. It feels vulnerable.”
Aw! That’s reasonable! He’s clearly trying not to create any bad blood with his ex, too, by sharing too many personal deets. Though now we’re even more curious what those “issues” were. LOLz!
Sounds like they just weren’t on the same page in life and it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps that shouldn’t be too surprising since they’d previously called off an engagement. The signs were always there…
Thoughts? Do U really believe there was no scandal? If so, what do you think the issues that pulled them apart were? Tell us (below)!
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