Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck split up in 2004 because they had “crumbled under the pressure” of fame.
The pop superstar eventually tied the knot with Hollywood actor Affleck in 2022 after rekindling their romance — they were due to get married almost 20 years earlier. The couple has now revealed that they felt they had to call the whole thing off just three days before they were due to get married because of the “scrutiny” that surrounded their relationship.
“Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding. We had a big wedding planned … 14 ushers and bridesmaids, and three days before we just crumbled under the pressure,” Lopez said in her new This Is Me … Now: A Love Story documentary.
“When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was the massive amount of scrutiny around our private life,” Affleck added.
But the “Jenny from the Block” hitmaker — who has twins Emme and Max with ex-husband Marc Anthony while Affleck was married to 13 Going on 30 star Jennifer Garner from 2005 until 2018 and has Violet, Seraphina and Samuel with her — admitted that their breakup eventually put she and her now-husband on a “course to figuring ourselves out and to being better people” by the time they got back together in 2021.
“Yeah, I think I’ve forgiven you all the way. I think I need to forgive myself some things,” she replied when Affleck asked her if he was forgiven for breaking up with her in the first place.
Lopez revealed just before releasing her ninth studio album, This Is Me…Now, that she thinks it is a “surreal miracle” that she and Affleck rekindled their love.
“I wrote This Is Me … Then when Ben and I fell in love 20-something years ago. As fate would have it, we came back into each other’s lives. And, on the 20th anniversary of This Is Me … Then, I announced that I would do This Is Me… Now. It was inspired by the surreal miracle that had happened,” she told Metro.
“Him coming back into my life and the two of us reuniting in a way that we never expected — that was the inspiration for even going in the studio. The album just poured out of me,” Lopez added.
