Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years

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Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years

Alexa, play “Dear Ben” from Jennifer Lopez’s 2002 album, This Is Me … Then. Lopez and Ben Affleck were first linked in the early 2000s, with the Grammy nominee confirming their engagement to Diane Sawyer in November 2002. “It's just a blanket, a quilt of rose petals, all over the whole entire house,” she recalled about the proposal at the time. “So many candles, and vases, bouquets. And my song 'Glad' was playing … I walk in and I was just overwhelmed. I wasn't expecting it, and I was just like 'Oh, my God.'" Affleck enlisted Lopez’s mother to help him pop the question and read her a love letter. “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,” she continued. The twosome went on to costar in 2003’s Gigli and 2004’s Jersey Girl before calling off their wedding in early 2004. While Lopez married Marc Anthony later that year, Affleck moved on with Jennifer Garner. Both the “Waiting for Tonight” singer and the Town actor welcomed kids with their new partners. Lopez and Anthony, who share twins Max and Emme, split in 2014 after a decade of marriage. Affleck and Garner — parents of Violet, Seraphina and Samuel — split in 2015 after 10 years of marriage. [jwplayer ZB7FbXrF-l3ahXupL] While both Lopez and Affleck went on to have high-profile relationships following their respective divorces, the twosome sent social media into a tizzy when they were spotted together in April 2021 following her split from Alex Rodriguez. In addition to being seen together in Los Angeles, Lopez and Affleck were spotted on vacation together in Montana that May. “Alex was jealous that Jen and Ben were seeing each other,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. “He’s still holding out hope they can reconcile.” Another insider told Us that Affleck and Lopez were keeping in touch following the Montana getaway. "[She] has feelings for Ben. They are taking it slowly, but things are moving in a romantic direction," the insider said. "Jen really enjoyed her trip to Montana and is really loving Ben's friendship.”

Nearly one year after the pair reconnected, Lopez confirmed they had gotten engaged.

“Saturday night while at my favorite place on earth (in the bubble bath), my beautiful love got on one knee and proposed,” she wrote in her “On the J. Lo” newsletter in April 2022. “I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time.”

Us confirmed in July 2022 that they had secretly tied the knot.

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2002

"I'd probably say that he is brilliantly smart, loving, charming, affectionate. And I just admire him in every way. I respect him. I feel like he teaches me things,” Lopez told Sawyer about then-fiancé Affleck in 2002. “We talked about how people kind of see him with one type of person and me with another type of person, and the two of us together is like 'How did that happen?,' and how we're probably more alike and from the same kind of background and, you know, same kind of upbringing and same kind of family and same kind of house.”

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2003

“You can’t pinpoint it,” Lopez told Pat O’Brien during a joint interview with Affleck at their then-home in 2003. “We became friends first. That is the honest to God truth.”

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2008

When Affleck was asked about any regrets from his relationship with Lopez, he cited his role in her “Jenny From the Block” music video. “If I have a regret, it was doing the music video,” he told the Daily Record in 2008. “But that happened years ago. I've moved on. … 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."

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2012

“I think Jen and I made a mistake in that we fell in love, we were excited and maybe too accessible,” Affleck said during an interview on the British TV series Live in 2008. “I don’t think either of us anticipated the degree to which it would take on a world of its own.”

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2014

“It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” Lopez wrote about the split from Affleck in her 2014 book, True Love.

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2014

“It was probably my first big heartbreak,” the musician told Maria Shriver on the Today show in 2014 before addressing how quickly she moved on with Anthony. “And to have one of my best friends who I’d known for years, who I actually love and did have chemistry with, come into my life and say, ‘I’m here’ … What you need to know is, nobody can save you or heal you. Only you can do that for you.”

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2014

“I really felt like I had found somebody great and he had found somebody great and we thought we could make it work,” Lopez told Hoda Kotb about Affleck in 2014.

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2016

“[When I first met him] I felt like … ‘OK, this is it.’ [But] sometimes I feel like what you think people are and how you see them when you love them is different than when they reveal later,” the Shades of Blue alum told Jess Cagle in 2016. “I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there.”

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2016

After Affleck made headlines for a giant tattoo on his back in 2016, Andy Cohen asked the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” singer about the ink. ”It's awful!" she exclaimed on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. "It has too many colors. His tattoos always had too many colors."

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2020

“I lost my sense of self, questioned if I belonged in this business, thought maybe I did suck at everything, And my relationship [with Ben] self-destructed in front of the entire world,” she told Vanity Fair in 2018. “It was a two-year thing for me until I picked myself up again.”

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2020

The actor told The New York Times in 2020 that Lopez should have been nominated for an Oscar for her role in Hustlers.

"She's the real thing,” he said. "I keep in touch periodically with her and have a lot of respect for her. How awesome is it that she had her biggest hit movie at 50? That's f—king baller."

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2021

“People were so f–king mean about her — 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 you said,” Affleck said of Lopez on the Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast in January 2021. “Now it’s like she’s lionized and respected for the work she did, where she came from, what she accomplished — as well she f–king should be! … I would say you have a better shot — coming from the Bronx — of ending up as like [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor on the Supreme Court than you do of having Jennifer Lopez’s career and being who she is at 50 years old today.”

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2021

Affleck was quoted in Lopez’s May 2021 InStyle cover story.

“I thought I had a good work ethic, but I was completely humbled and blown away by what she was committed to doing day in and day out, the seriousness in which she took her work, the quiet and dedicated way she went about accomplishing her goals, and then how she would go back and redouble her efforts,” he gushed. “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.”

He added, “Where are you keeping the fountain of youth? Why do you look the same as you did in 2003 and it kind of looks like I'm in my 40s … at best?”

Lopez replied: “Ben is funny! He still looks pretty good too."

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2021

During an interview with WSJ. Magazine, Affleck said that the relationship is "definitely beautiful," but he wants to keep the details private.

"It’s hard to say who benefits more, without going into gossipy detail. I could just say that I feel great about being very healthy. And it is a good story. It’s a great story. And, you know, maybe one day I’ll tell it. I’ll write it all out. And then I’ll light it on fire," the director said in the interview, published in December 2021. "I am very lucky in my life in that I have benefited from second chances, and I am aware that other people don’t even get first chances. I’ve had second chances in my career. I’ve had second chances as a human being. Life is difficult, and we are always failing and hopefully learning from those failures. The one thing you really need to avail yourself of the opportunities provided from that growth is the second chance. I’ve definitely tried to take advantage of that. I haven’t always been successful, but in cases in which I have, they’ve turned out to be the defining aspects of my life."

In the same interview, he hinted at a future wedding. 

"Only in the last four years have I been able to not be so terrified, because I recognize I won’t die without work," he shared. "The most important thing is being a good father. The second most important thing is to be a good man. And a good person. And, ostensibly, you know, a good husband. Hopefully."

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2022

Speaking to his friend Matt Damon for an Entertainment Weekly cover story, the Tender Bar star said he considered meeting Lopez to be the silver lining of making Gigli. He also credited the box-office bomb with helping him figure out that he wanted to do more behind the camera.

"If the reaction to Gigli hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have ultimately decided, 'I don't really have any other avenue but to direct movies,' which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life," he said in January 2022. "So in those ways, it's a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life."

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2022

“You have to do what feels good to you all the time. But at the same time, you learn from the past, you do things better the second time,” Lopez told The New York Times in a February 2022 profile. “There’s a part of it that, yes, we’re together. But there’s a part of it that’s not, you know, being so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago. … When you’re in things, you do what feels right. And I don’t beat myself up over ‘I wish I had done this differently’ or ‘Did I do too much?’ That’s what was comfortable at the time. I did what I did. [Alex] did what he did. And it was fine. The relationship stuff had nothing to do with being public or not being public.”

She continued: “You can’t live life and think that things are just mistakes: I just messed up there, I messed up there. No, it’s all lessons. It’s really what can you extrapolate from it that is going to help you grow and go to the next level of understanding yourself, finding yourself and being able to be at peace with your life, at peace with who you are.”

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2022

“I just want my future to be full of love and happiness, with my children and my partner,” the Marry Me star told People in February 2022. “I think everybody just wants to be happy, with somebody to go on the journey with and grow old with, and I feel good about that right now. To see the person, the human being, the man that he is today, the father that he is today, the partner that he is — he is so everything I always knew he was and wanted to be.”

She added that their romance is “a beautiful love story.” Lopez explained: “What I can teach my children is that real love exists. Some things can be forever, but it doesn't mean they just have a straight line."

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2022

In an April 8 "On the JLo" newsletter, Lopez revealed that she got engaged. Days later, she revealed that she was shocked when her love proposed while she was taking a bath.

"I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that after 20 years this was happening all over again, I was quite literally speechless," she wrote, in part.

The "Marry Me" singer continued, recalling, "I was smiling so big and tears were coming down my face, feeling so incredibly happy and whole. It was nothing fancy at all, but it was the most romantic thing I could’ve ever imagined...just a quiet Saturday night at home, two people promising to always be there for each other. Two very lucky people. Who got a second chance at true love."

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2022

"We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient," Lopez wrote in her July 2022 "On The JLo" newsletter, released hours after she married Affleck in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony. 

"When love is real, the only thing that matters in marriage is one another and the promise we make to love, care, understand, be patient, loving and good to one another," she explained. "We had that. And so much more. Best night of our lives."

She added that they are happy to have the love of their children as they start this new chapter. "They were right when they said, 'all you need is love'. We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reason to look forward to," she wrote. "Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for." 

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2022

Lopez called her early 2000s split from Affleck the "biggest heartbreak of my life" while discussing her ninth album, This Is Me ... Now, in November 2022. "I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn't get it right," she said during an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, calling Affleck "the love of my life."

The songwriter went on to recall how pressure from the public eye "destroyed" the couple's first shot at romance. "It felt, at times, unfair, but neither one of us is that person to be like, 'Woe is me,'" she noted. "So we were like, 'Well, we just got to dust it off and keep it moving.' I think, in the weirdest way, that it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing. ... It fueled us in a weird way that we felt we had to prove ourselves again."