Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck have one of Hollywood’s greatest, and most dramatic, romances. The decades-spanning connection that saw them initially get together back in the early 2000s but crumble under a much-publicized breakup a mere few days before their planned nuptials. Of course, the power couple would famously rekindle their romance twenty years later, including eloping in Las Vegas before having a big, star-studded wedding ceremony at Affleck’s Savannah, GA compound in 2022.
And while much is known about the ups and downs of the superstars’ relationship, we recently got an interesting bit of romantic intel directly from JLo herself. While promoting her latest movie, This Is Me…Now: The Film, Lopez had a heart-to-heart with Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe about the inspirations behind both the record and the narrative feature, and how her real-life romance with Affleck played into things:
This Is Me…Now and This Is Me…Then are two very celebratory moments of being completely and totally in love with the person that is your soul mate, the person you want to be with. I found him then and it didn’t work out and it wasn’t an unrequited love, Ben and I always loved each other. We had work to do, he had work to do and I had work to do, I think…I’m saying that in retrospect, looking back on it…at that moment, it was just a heartbreak, like, we for some reason just can’t make it. It’s too much, the world is too much.
However, when asked by Lowe about how the couple came to call off their first wedding back in September 2003, the actress-singer revealed:
We didn’t break up right at that moment. It happened over the series of the next few months. Because what it did, it casted doubt in me and both of us about what our relationship was and where it was going, I think. I knew in my heart that I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life, I knew that. But it didn’t feel like we were gonna make it and so it scared me. It was very hard, it was a very sad moment of letting go of someone that you truly love because you just can’t figure it out, you just don’t have the capacity and the ability at that moment emotionally to figure it out.
The music icon also divulged that, despite their ages when they split for the first time, Jen and Ben “just weren’t mature enough” to make their relationship work at the time:
We just weren’t mature enough in that way, even though he was in his late 20s, I was in my early 30s. We weren’t ready to deal with and to look at each other and go, ‘What we have is real, we need to buckle down and we need to do some work.’ We just weren’t there yet.
The “Can’t Get Enough” performer detailed how it actually was Bennifer breaking up and moving on with other people that led them back to each other all of those years later:
So we went and both tried and found other people and had beautiful children and other families and even had other relationships after that. And it wasn’t until both of us had done, I know for me, a lot of work and had gotten to a place where I was like, ‘You know, I’m totally good on my own, I’m chill, I love my life’…that’s when he showed back up. And funnily enough he said he had the same experience. And that’s how it went down.
Clearly things worked out for those two: Lopez’s famous hubby is a co-writer on This Is Me…Now: The Film and Affleck has been proudly supporting his wife on the red carpets and through promotion for the movie, which complements her upcoming ninth studio album, This Is Me…Now.
You can catch both Jen and Ben in all of their romantic, reunited glory in This Is Me…Now: The Film, which is a Prime Video exclusive that drops on the streamer tomorrow, February 16th.