Not every love story gets a sequel, so Jennifer Lopez celebrated her second chance at love with Ben Affleck on her new album.
Lopez, 54, released This Is Me … Now on Friday, February 16, along with a fantastical movie titled This Is Me … Now: A Love Story. The album is a sequel to 2002’s This Is Me … Then, and like the album she dropped two decades ago, her new LP includes an ode to Affleck, 51.
“And when I think you let me down, you lift my hopes / And if I try to pull away, you pull me close,” Lopez sings on “Dear Ben, Pt. II,” adding that the Gone Girl actor always reminds J. Lo why he’s “the man I chose.”
In the first verse, Lopez directly addresses Affleck, singing, “You showed me what it is / You showed me what I need / I was missing a part / You was the missing piece.”
Affleck and Lopez famously met on the set of Gigli in early 2002. By the end of the year, he had already proposed. The duo were set to walk down the aisle in September 2003, but they canceled the wedding at the last minute due to “excessive media attention.” At the start of 2004, the two announced their breakup.
Over the next 16 years, Affleck and Lopez pursued different relationships and started families.: Lopez married Marc Anthony in 2004, and they welcomed twins Max and Emme, now 15, in 2008. Affleck married Jennifer Garner in 2005, and they welcomed daughters Violet, 18, and Seraphina, 15, and son Samuel, 11. Lopez split from Anthony, 55, in 2011, while Affleck and Garner, 51, announced their separation in 2015.
By May 2021, both Lopez and Affleck were single and decided to give their romance a second chance. Affleck proposed in April 2022, and they tied the knot that July at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. In August 2022, they held a more formal, elaborate wedding at Affleck’s Georgia residence.
Lopez remarked on the pair’s reconciliation on “Dear Ben, Pt. II,” wondering, “How did we end up here without a rewind?” before declaring that she’s “committed” to this life. “I’m in it, admit it, I adore you,” she sings on the track.
“Dear Ben, Pt. II” offers a more mature perspective than the 2002 original, which has a more lovesick vibe. “I think God made you for me / A mix of passionate fidelities,” the younger Lopez sang on “Dear Ben” before addressing him as, “My lust, my love, my man, my child, my friend and my king.”
Affleck and Lopez’s romance is at the heart of This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, which is a fictionalized portrayal of Lopez’s life over the past 20 years. “There’s parts of it that feel kind of very autobiographical, and then there’s parts of it that are kind of meta,” Lopez explained during a press conference earlier this month.
In addition to tracking every celebrity cameo in the film, Us Weekly compiled a breakdown of all the real-world references to Lopez’s life. Some moments allude to her multiple marriages, her initial breakup with Affleck, and the infamous 1999 shooting that happened at a nightclub where she and her then-boyfriend Sean “Diddy” Combs were partying.
