Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck Break Up: Why Bennifer 2.0 Didn’t Work

Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck’s Divorce: Everything We Know About Their Split

Well, that was invigorating while it lasted.

After months of speculation that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s marriage was as good as over, Lopez confirmed it by filing for divorce Aug. 20.

Their date of separation? April 26, according to court documents.

Which means, you really can’t put much past millions of inquiring minds, the investment in the second coming of Bennifer having been extensive and unrelenting. And once a crack in the recently repaired foundation appeared, inspectors were on 24/7 watch for the whole structure to come tumbling down.

But before the second coming of Bennifer proved that some phenomena are best left to occur once in a lifetime, this was a story of rekindled love, second chances and personal growth.

Not to mention the portmanteau that started a really exhausting trend.

Because, while to the TikTok generation it seemingly all started on April 30, 2021, the day Affleck was spotted hanging out at Lopez’s house, it really began 19 years beforehand.

Within an hour of the alert of a shred of a chance, it was if current events ceased to matter as folks were blissfully whisked away via social media to a simpler time (ironically one that predated social media).

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

There were shades of pre-pandemic 2020, when Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt’s reunion at the SAG Awards also made many people wonder if perhaps the world was slowly but surely righting itself.

Reader, the world did not right itself. But Lopez and Affleck’s reunion struck a similar chord—delicious, carefree and so refreshingly unimportant, but at the same time an all-hands-on-deck pop culture emergency.

And this ambulance turned out to be worth chasing.

It wasn’t long before they flung the doors wide open, marched outside and declared themselves to the world: We’re back, baby, and we’re spectacular. 

Which, if memory served, was not Affleck’s style back in the day. But that was then, and this was him now… Right?

John Shearer/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

In a surprising 180 from days of yore, an assessment of the arc of their relationship featured prominently in the documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which came out in February. While technically about J.Lo’s self-love journey, it just so happened that in the film she ended up with the man she called the love of her life along the way.

While he didn’t direct (Jason B. Bergh did the honors), Affleck is the one doing the interviewing—which is admittedly more in his comfort zone than being on display and having his story told.

“I did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that it’s the greatest love story never told,” Affleck (who also appeared in Lopez’s fictional but self-referential album companion visual This Is Me…Now) said in the Amazon Prime feature. “And if you’re making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.”

Reservations about participating aside, he did it for her.

“I don’t really love being in the making-of documentary about my personal life,” Affleck admitted, “which is why I’m so relieved that I’m not really…It seems like I might be in this, but I’m not really. I was worrying for no reason. The movie wasn’t about me. It was about the ability to love yourself and that love story is a lot f–king harder to find than Prince Charming.”

Also harder than finding Prince Charming? Losing him, dealing with it, moving on with your life and then deciding whether or not to take another whirl around the floor.

Lopez, thrice-divorced and a mother of two, literally opened the door to her ex, a divorced father of three, by having him over to her L.A. home. And despite the pair having gone their very separate ways 18 years beforehand, hot damn if the community formerly known as the Twitterverse didn’t have thoughts.

Why, however, did an 18-month-long romance that was long ago filed away under “nostalgia” cause so many palpitations? What is it about certain celebrities together—even though in this case each had been through so much since—that just leaves an indelible impression in hearts and minds, a memory preserved in amber that practically dug itself up when the opportunity arose?

“I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there,” Lopez told People in May 2016.

“We didn’t try to have a public relationship,” she continued. “We just happened to be together at the birth of the tabloids, and it was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It was just a lot of pressure.”

Affleck had a similar take, saying on a January 2021 episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, “Me dating Jennifer Lopez happened to be that tabloid story at the time when that business grew exponentially. When they realized there’s actually a 10 times bigger audience for our product than we are selling to.”

And with Bennifer, the press had struck gold, spinning as much as they could—almost as if they didn’t trust it to be the real thing.

So if you weren’t there, here’s what it was like, then:

While Gigli is usually mentioned more in conjunction with the end of their relationship, Lopez and Affleck actually met making the box office and critical bomb that would become synonymous with high-profile failure upon its release in 2003. (Affleck, Lopez, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken? It sounded promising.)

Halle Berry was first attached to play the female lead (which, in case you haven’t seen it, is not the title character—Affleck played Larry Gigli), but her shooting schedule for X-Men 2 created a conflict, clearing the way for Lopez to sign on to the romantic crime caper in late 2001. (A twist of fate right up there with Nicole Kidman dropping out of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, to be replaced by Angelina Jolie.)

After they wrapped, Affleck issued a full-page thank you to Lopez in the industry trades in March 2002.

“You have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty in courage, great empathy, astonishing talent, real poise and true grace…It has been nothing but an honor and a pleasure to work with you,” the message read. “I only wish I were lucky enough to be in all your movies.”

Signed, ”With love, respect and gratitude, Ben Affleck.”

He insisted, however, that they were still just friends. Lopez had been married to dancer Cris Judd, her second husband, since September 2001.

To have crossed that line, Affleck later told Vanity Fair, would’ve gone against his “fundamental code.” But, he explained of their romantic timeline, “It changed when she told me she was getting separated. At that point, it became a possibility; doors were opened.”

Lopez finalized her divorce from Judd in June 2002.

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“I have such a respect for the institution of marriage that I don’t believe people should spend their lives together if they’re not going to be totally happy,” the On the 6 artist later told Vibe, explaining her very short second union. “Do we spend time now trying to make it work and wasting precious moments of our lives, or do we remedy the situation and move on?”

And by July 2002 she had moved on with Affleck, who was a couple years removed from an off-and-on romance with Shakespeare in Love co-star Gwyneth Paltrow and fresh from action hero turns in Pearl Harbor and The Sum of All Fears. 

He and Lopez were both very famous, and seemingly equipped to handle being very famous together. He explained to Vanity Fair that he took out that chivalrous ad both to communicate his appreciation and to dispel any noxious rumors that she was some sort of a diva on set—a rumor that admittedly made him hesitant to work with her at first.

“I wanted to go on record within the industry to counteract that, to say what a pleasure it was to work with her,” he said. “She works harder than anybody I’ve ever seen. I thought I was busy with movies and television and writing; I felt pretty maxed out until I met her. She was doing all that and recording albums on weekends!”

(Sweetly, not long before Bennifer’s resurgence in 2021, Affleck told InStyle, “She remains, to this day, the hardest-working person I’ve come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”)

Together they made pointed hay out of the relentless amount of attention their relationship attracted, her “Jenny From the Block” music video opening with the two of them under surveillance even during intimate moments at home. There are also scenes of them at a café, on a hotel balcony and driving, Affleck broodily pumping gas, the paparazzi unwilling to leave them alone for even a minute. And, last but not least, the actor gives J.Lo’s sensational backside a reassuring pat as they canoodle on a yacht.

But in that moment, it felt as though the pieces were falling into place for both of them. 

“I think [the media scrutiny can hurt] if it’s not a real thing,” Lopez told MTV News days before the video premiered on Nov. 5, 2002. “I’ve been in relationships where they were kind of unstable, and so the media messed with it a lot. When it’s not important to the relationship in any way—because what’s important is just the two of you—then it can’t mess with it. Nothing can. So in that sense, no, it doesn’t have an effect if it’s something that’s really real for both of you. In my experience, anyway.”

So she and Affleck proceeded to do their best to act like a regular couple, even if that was largely impossible.

“We try [to keep things private], we try. Some times it’s easier than others; it just depends if we can slip in and then slip out,” Lopez said. We go out to dinner, we go out with friends, we try to live as normal an existence as we can and still enjoy all of the other parts of being in the public eye as well.”

“We try to make the best of it,” she continued. “I’m not saying there’s not times that we wish [we] could just be going to the movies and come out and there’s not a crowd there waiting. You just want to spend your Sunday afternoon not working, but at the same time we both love what we do. If that’s something that’s part of it, then that’s fine. We feel the love and we’re very happy about it.”

BTW, Lopez was sporting a ring, but would only say that she and Affleck—they were also filming Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl around this time—had talked about marriage.

As it turned out, after just a few months of dating, they were engaged. Affleck had proposed to Lopez during a trip back to his old stomping grounds of Boston to visit his family. In fact, he offered her that instantly iconic 6.1-carat pink diamond ring from Harry Winston (estimated worth: between $1.2 million and $2.5 million) at his mom Chris Anne’s house. 

Affleck did seem a little nervous on the way over, Lopez recalled to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer that November, but she didn’t think too much about it.

When he opened the door, there was just “a quilt of rose petals, all over the entire house,” Lopez said. “So many candles, and vases, bouquets. And my song ‘Glad’ was playing…I walk in and I was just like overwhelmed. I wasn’t expecting it, and I was just like ‘Oh my God.'”

Affleck told her his mother helped plan the whole thing. Then he proceeded to read her a letter detailing all the reasons he wanted her to be his wife, concluding with “Will you marry me?”

“I just started sobbing. Crying. I was like ‘Oh! My God!'” Lopez continued. “I had cried a lot over sadness over the years. And for the first time in my life, I cried incredible purging tears of happiness. It was the most cleansing feeling and the most wonderful feeling I had ever had.”

She was also too bowled over by the ring, her favorite color being pink, to answer at first. Lopez recalled with a laugh, “I was like, ‘Oh! Yeah! Yeah! Yes! Yes!'”

RJ Capak/WireImage

She said that, while she’d been married twice before, she couldn’t wait to finally be in a marriage.

“This is not to take anything away from Cris or Ojani [Noa, husband No. 1 from February 1997 till June 1998], who are wonderful people and who I loved very much—but I think it more had to do with me,” she explained, “being in such a crazy life and needing a sense of security.”

She knew somehow that being with Affleck was different because, Lopez said, “I was just more scared…It was too powerful…Whereas before, it was almost I had control of things, so I wasn’t afraid to kind of be in there, in the fire.” But “this time it was just smothering me and— so hot, you know, that it was just like—it made me afraid.”

But she was also inspired.

Gus Ruelas/LADN/WireImage.com

Lopez told Sawyer that the songs for 2002’s This Is Me…Then, her third studio album, just “flowed” once she fell for Affleck. “It will always represent to me the time in my life where I finally started to figure things out and get it right, you know what I mean? Really started who I was and what I needed,” she said. “And that real sense of self I think you don’t get until you’re older.”

The album was subsequently dedicated to her fiancé: “You are my life…my sole inspiration for every lyric, every emotion, every bit of feeling on this record.” And at the last minute, Lopez had the title of track five, formerly called “Perfect,” changed to “Dear Ben.”

Also in that same whirlwind month, the Daredevil star was named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”

“The difference between me and People magazine,” Lopez told the publication, “is that he’ll still be the sexiest man alive in my eyes when he’s 100 years old.”

They were full speed ahead, screw the skeptics.

“Why did I fall in love with this person? What does that say about me?,” Affleck, an Oscar winner at 25 for cowriting Good Will Hunting with Matt Damon and already involved in a prickly relationship with fame, said to Vanity Fair in early 2003. “Maybe I am conflicted, but I also have a contrary streak.”

He was aware that coupling with Lopez had been the opposite of a low-profile move.

“I said, Just because I’m in this situation, I’m not going to behave any way differently than I ever did,” he said. “Jennifer is a really wonderful, fabulous woman, smart and interesting. Spending time with her makes me a better person and a happier person. She impressed me every day. It feels better to me to be with her than without her. That’s why I made this decision, even if some other things have to be sacrificed.”

Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

And sure, “there were a million reasons not to” get engaged right away, he acknowledged. “Neither of us is so obtuse that we didn’t understand the degree of skepticism, the amount of sniggering in how the joke would be received. Saturday Night Live epitomized it: Tina Fey said, ‘Jennifer Lopez announced her engagement—it’s the first marriage for Affleck, the third for Lopez, and the last for neither.’ But that’s not something I want to allow to dictate how I make choices.”

He continued, “This is something I would do if Jen was a teacher and I was working construction in Boston. Jen and I want to get married for the reason everyone else does: We fell in love. I’m in love; I want to have a family, and she’s the only person I’ve ever met who made me entertain the thought of doing that.”

He added, “You know within 10 minutes of meeting Jen that she’ll be a good mother. Though the heavens fall, she’ll be a good mother. My father said the same thing about my mother, who was a world-class-Olympian mother.”

Though Lopez told Sawyer that no one should read too much into the fact that she and Affleck were spotted looking at a church in Boston, they did plan to get married in September 2003.

Linda Cataffo/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

In the meantime, they went to each other’s premieres, to watch Affleck’s beloved Red Sox play, to the 2003 Oscars. He bought Lopez a $350,000 Rolls Royce Phantom for her birthday that July.

But then Gigli was released Aug. 1, 2003, and got panned as if people were personally offended by it.

Which, perhaps given the faith they’d put into the entity that was Bennifer, they were.

Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock

“At first it was an infatuation, what an interesting couple,” Affleck reflected to Awards Chatter host Scott Feinberg in 2021. “And then there was a ton of resentment—ton of resentment against me, a ton of resentment against Jennifer.”

“People were so f–king mean about her,” he added. “Sexist, racist, ugly vicious s–t was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now, you would literally be fired for saying those things.”

And though it’s difficult to look at Lopez…now…and see anything other than her preternatural glow, those days got to her.

“I think the worst, probably lowest point was the whole Gigli era. It was pretty tough,” she admitted on HuffPost Live in 2015. “It was a very badly reviewed film. I was in a high-profile relationship at the time that fell apart in a really bad way, and so the kind of mix of those two things and the tabloid press had just come into existence at the time, so I was like a poster child for that moment. I was in the tabloids every other week about how my life was falling apart. It was a tough time.”

For Affleck, too, as he recalled on Any Given Wednesday With Bill Simmons in 2016, “If you went by what people said…I wasn’t cool and I wasn’t talented, and I was like the lowest rung of cool and talented that you could possibly be in the public consciousness at that time. I had broken up with Jennifer Lopez and I had like three or four movies in a row that had bombed.”

The unraveling happened slowly, and then all at once.

First came the postponement of their September 2003 nuptials, the couple blaming outside intrusion for the change of plans.

Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

“Due to the excessive media attention surrounding our wedding, we have decided to postpone the date,” they said in a statement days before they were supposed to tie the knot in Santa Barbara, Calif. “When we found ourselves seriously contemplating hiring three separate ‘decoy brides’ at three different locations, we realized that something was awry. We began to feel that the spirit of what should have been the happiest day of our lives could be compromised. We felt what should have been a joyful and sacred day could be spoiled for us, our families and our friends.”

If there was an alternate plan, they never shared it.

“Everything’s going along fine,” Affleck told the Associated Press at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2004. “We’re good.”

At the same time, however, Lopez had been spotted several time zones away in Miami, and on Jan. 22, her rep confirmed their engagement was off for good. (In The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Lopez says they broke up three days before their wedding.)

She boasted in her song “One Love” that she “kept the ring,” but she returned the dazzling pink bauble that launched countless imitators.

And that wasn’t the only wedding that was canceled: Smith also cut out a 12-second scene from Jersey Girl in which Affleck and Lopez’s characters got married.

Miramax

“Okay. There’s Jennifer Lopez standing next to Ben Affleck, and she’s wearing a wedding gown and he’s wearing a tux,” the director—who has since taken credit for coining “Bennifer”—explained to MIT’s The Tech in March 2004 upon the film’s unfortunately timed release. “Who watching the movie is not going to step out of the movie and say, ‘Hey, that’s f–ked up. They didn’t get married’?

“And suddenly, [the audience] is gone. We’ve lost them for a few seconds, and you don’t want to lose them for any amount of time when you’re telling a story. You want them in that black box focused and in another place in time.”

Affleck sought to distinguish the film from the ill-fated release that preceded it. “Gigli was a movie that definitely suffered from the surfeit of publicity about me and Jen,” he told the AP. “So it was kind of, ‘Enough already,’ before the movie came out. Also Gigli, while it was a great experience and while I had a great time making it, didn’t really, ultimately work as a movie, and Jersey Girl really does. I believe it’s a beautiful movie, and I’m really proud of it.”

Alas, it wasn’t the right time for fans to embrace Jersey Girl, despite Affleck and Smith’s proven track record.

Recalling this fallow period, Affleck has said more than once that he did not—nor should anyone else—blame Lopez for the hit his acting career took in the mid-’00s.

“If I have a regret, it was doing the music video,” he told the Daily Record in 2008, when he made his well-received directorial debut with Gone Baby Gone. “But that happened years ago. I’ve moved on.” 

To point the finger at anyone else, he added, “It not only makes me look like a petulant fool, but it surely qualifies as ungentlemanly. For the record, did she hurt my career? No.”

Lopez didn’t waste too many moments after their split, either, personally or professionally. She made the hit comedy Monster-in-Law and married Marc Anthony on June 5, 2004. They separated in 2011 (and divorced in 2014) but remained close as parents of now 16-year-old twins Max and Emme.

Lopez beat Affleck to the altar by barely a year. He married Jennifer Garner on June 29, 2005, and they had daughters Violet, 18, and Seraphina, 15, and son Samuel, 12, before separating in 2015 (finally divorcing in 2018).

Reflecting on all the twists and turns she’d navigated to date, Lopez told HuffPost Live in 2015 that she had “no regrets. I would do it all over again, I think. I really would. Even the relationship part. I just feel like everything is part of your story and your journey and is meant to be and helps you grow if you’re willing to look at it, and I’m willing to look.”

And though their 2021 reunion felt like a bolt from the blue, Lopez and Affleck never hid that they had remained friends. (Lest we forget, they too had a cozy awards show reunion, trading whispers at the Oscars in 2015.)

“We don’t have the kind of relationship where she relies on me for advice,” Affleck told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012, “but we do have the kind of relationship where there’ll be an e-mail saying, ‘Oh, your movie looks great.’ I remember when she got American Idol. I said, ‘This was really smart. Good luck.'”

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And he continued to root for her. “Now it’s like she is lionized and respected for the work she has done, where she came from and what she accomplished,” Affleck said on Awards Chatter. “As well as she f–king should be.”

So no wonder the world reacted how it did when it learned Lopez and Affleck, both simultaneously single for the first time in ages, were hanging out. And then totally together, again. And then engaged, again.

And then, on July 16, 2022, married. To each other, a comeback for the ages.

Recalling what is now their first breakup in The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Lopez said, “I feel like I lost the love of my life, I felt like I lost the best friend that I ever had. And I couldn’t talk for so many years and that was the hardest part.”

And she was angry about how it all unfolded. “But,” she continued,” that heartbreak set both of us on a course to figuring ourselves out to being better people.”

But while this may have been a different time, and even a different thing, here we are again. And did we already know what was going to happen?

Check out the more explicit signs from the past several months that history was going to repeat itself:

Dia Dipasupil / Staff / GETTY IMAGES

Solo Appearance at Met Gala

While the dress code for the 2024 Met Gala was “The Garden of Time,” fans started wondering if there was a thorny situation between Jennifer and Ben after he didn’t accompany her to the star-studded soirée (where she served as co-chair) on May 6.

As for the reason the Oscar winner—who took part in Netflix’s Tom Brady roast in California the day before—didn’t join the singer at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art? Ben’s rep told E! he was filming the Accountant 2 in L.A.

Instagram / Lenna Marsak

Social Media Moves

Even though Bennifer stayed tight-lipped on the split rumors, social media speculation continued to get loud after fans noticed J.Lo had liked an Instagram post about relationship red flags a few months before.

“You can’t build a relationship with someone who is disconnected from themselves,” the caption of the March 19 post read. “We can’t expect someone to see us when we can’t even see themselves. Getting in a relationship is the easy part. Nurturing & fostering it is a different story. After all, love is not a feeling, it’s action.”

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Different Perspectives on Relationships in the Public Eye

Just a few months before the rumblings of a split emerged, Ben shared insight into his and Jennifer’s very different approaches to privacy.

“I had a very firm sense of boundaries initially around the press while Jen I don’t think objected to it in the way I did,” the Argo star explained in the Grammy nominee’s documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told that was released in February. “I very much did object to it.”  

Expressing how the “massive amount of scrutiny” they faced was a “catalyst” for the end of their engagement in the early aughts, Ben said he wanted to keep details of their private life more, well, private after they rekindled their romance in 2021.

“Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,'” he added. “And then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like you’re gonna marry a boat captain and you go, ‘Well, I don’t like the water.’ We’re just two people with kind of different approaches trying to learn to compromise.”  

Photo by Christopher Polk/Golden Globes 2024/Golden Globes 2024 via Getty Images

Living Apart

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

No Ben on Atlas Red Carpets

And as the month progressed, she continued her string of solo red carpet appearances—attending both the L.A. premiere and Mexico City fan event for her movie Atlas without him. However, Jennifer did accessorize her looks with her wedding ring.

Carlos Tischler/Eyepix Group/LightRocket via Getty Images

Questions on Where They Stood

In fact, a member of the audience at a press conference in Mexico asked about the breakup rumors. But as seen in a video shared by El Gordo y la Flaca, the actress simply responded, “You know better than that.”

Ethan Miller/Getty Images for ABA

Canceled Tour

At the end of May, representatives for Live Nation announced the cancelation of Jennifer’s U.S. Summer 2024 Tour This Is Me…Live, noting in her On the J.Lo newsletter, “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends.”

Adrián Monroy/Medios y Media/Getty Images

Saying No to Negativity

Not long after, the singer celebrated the success of her movie Atlas while also sending a cryptic message about negativity. 

“ATLAS is #1 worldwide again this week!!!” she stated in a June edition of her On the JLo newsletter. “Thank you all so much!!! It may seem like there’s a lot of negativity out in the world right now…but don’t let the voices of a few drown out that there is soooo much love out there.”

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Selling Their Home

That same month, TMZ reported the actors were privately selling the Beverly Hills mansion they had purchased just the year before. By July, they had publicly listed the home for $68 million. 

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Italian Getaway

While fans may have hoped Bennifer was gonna be alright after they attended family events together and she sent him a sweet Father’s Day tribute, the split speculation picked back up after J.Lo headed off to Italy in June while Ben stayed in L.A., where he was spotted without his wedding ring.

Instagram/@jenniferlopez

July 4th

And when it was time to celebrate the Fourth of July, the Maid in Manhattan star headed to the Hamptons in New York. While she posted a photo with one of her twins, Emme, Ben was not pictured.

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A Quiet Anniversary

July also marked the second anniversary of the Gigli costars’ Las Vegas wedding. And while Jennifer shared a celebratory post last year, she didn’t upload one this time around.

Instagram

Bridgerton Birthday

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No Birthday Shout-Out

And when Ben turned 52 on Aug. 15th, Jennifer didn’t give him a birthday shout-out on social media. Although, the “Jenny From the Block” artist did stop by his home on that day, according to photos obtained by Page Six.

Photo by Gotham/GC Images

This Is the End… Now

After months of speculation, Jennifer filed for divorce from Ben on Aug. 20 at Los Angeles County Superior Court. In the documents, she cited the couple’s date of separation as April 26, according to the filing obtained by TMZ. 

(Originally published May 4, 2021, at 9:15 a.m. PT)