Ben Affleck Finally Explained Why He and Jennifer Lopez Broke Up For Good

Yahoo

25-03-2025

Last August, Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck two years after the pair married. Since then, they have both been fairly private about their reasons for going their separate ways. Affleck, however, has just opened up about the breakdown of their marriage and the speculation that followed.
Speaking to British GQ, the actor and producer aimed to dispel the idea that their breakup was the result of one specific thing. "There's a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something," he said. "But honestly, [...] the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting."
He went on: "There's no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. There is no, 'This is what happened.'"
Instead, the story of their relationship breakdown is more complicated. "It's just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do," he went on. "And as you get older, this is true for me, I assume it's true for most people, there is no 'So-and-so did this' or 'This was the big event.'"
If he were to explain the ins and outs of their breakup, he added, it would sound "more like a couple's therapy session." He added, "You would tune out of someone else's couple's therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, 'Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.' And the reason I don't want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable."
Earlier in the interview, Affleck had opened up about the process of appearing in The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Lopez's documentary that followed the making of her musical film This Is Me... Now. Although her film was inspired by her relationship with Affleck, Affleck only made a brief, unrelated cameo in the movie.
As Affleck explained, he decided to appear in Lopez's documentary even though it was out of his normal comfort zone. "My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers," he said. "As happens in relationships, you don't always have the same attitude towards these things. And so I thought, 'Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?'"
Affleck wanted to show his support for Lopez by appearing in the film. "I love and support this person. I believe in them. They're great. I want people to see that," he said. "And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, You don't marry a ship captain and then say, 'Well, I don't like going out in the water.' You've got to own what you knew going into any relationship."
Affleck then responded to the common misconception that their different approaches to celebrity, as displayed in the documentary, was the root cause of their breakup. "I think it's important to say that wasn't the cause of some major fracture," he said. "It's not like you can watch that documentary and go, 'Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.'"
In another section of the interview, Affleck described his life, including his divorce, as "drama-free." 'I'm sure in your mind you're thinking, 'Oh, well, you just got divorced. That's not drama-free,'" he said to the interviewer. "And I understand that instinct, but all of this is pretty adult, and for all the sensational stuff that gets written, if somebody sat down and talked to me about it, and I said, 'Well, this is really the experience,' their eyes would glaze over with boredom.'
Lopez and Affleck's divorce was finalized earlier this year in January. According to reports, Affleck is "casually dating" following the split. Meanwhile, Lopez has spoken out about finding her sense of self as a single woman. "Being in a relationship doesn't define me," Lopez said to Nikki Glaser for Interview Magazine. "I am capable of joy and happiness all by myself."
Read the original article on InStyle