Ben Affleck set the record straight on the “root causes” of his divorce from Jennifer Lopez.
Affleck and Lopez finalized their divorce in January, roughly two years after getting married at the actor’s Georgia estate. The “Argo” star noted that while people have speculated about the issues that led to his divorce from JLo, the real reason is much more ordinary than anyone might believe. Affleck and Lopez’s different approaches to fame have been mentioned as the cause of their split after the premiere of Lopez’ documentary, “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” but the “Air” director emphasized it “wasn’t the cause of some major fracture.”
“Part of it was, ‘OK, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination,” Affleck explained in a cover story for GQ magazine. “There are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them.
“My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. 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?
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“I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that,” he continued. “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. And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.’”
The actor later shared that there was no big moment that brought their marriage to an end.
“I have nothing but respect [for Lopez]. I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But, honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”
Affleck emphasized there was “no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue” about his divorce from Lopez.
“The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no, ‘This is what happened,'” the “Accountant 2” star said. “It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do. 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.’ It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while.
“For one thing, you start going, ‘OK, 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.”
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Affleck has dealt with celebrity and fame since the start of his career and his breakout role in “Good Will Hunting.” The actor still hasn’t figured out why the public is so interested in his daily life.
“I’m aware that it’s absurd, and it’s ridiculous,” he told the outlet. “There’s nothing newsworthy at all about the day-to-day events of my life or the conversation I have with one person or another person that’s photographed.
“And often it’s like the big trick is to say, ‘So-and-so does this amid that,’ imply some correlation between the two. In other words, some broad event is taking place in some way, whether globally or around this person’s life. And, look, here they are frustrated with the parking meter. I’m definitely aware of the cosmic joke of it all.
“What I’ve ended up focusing on is: Look, I know what’s going on in my life. And, also, really more importantly, my kids know. We used to have a thing, my ex-wife [Jennifer Garner] and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand, we would say, well, ‘You know this isn’t always true because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant.’”
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The actor noted the attention is “more of a headache than anything else, and there certainly are worse things.”
He also praised Garner, whom Affleck married in 2005.
“And I’m really lucky that I have a really good co-parent and partner in Jennifer Garner, the kids’ mom, who’s wonderful and great, and we work together well,” he said.
Affleck and Garner announced their separation in 2015. However, the two didn’t finalize their divorce for another three years. During that time, Affleck went to rehab twice, and the two underwent marriage counseling.
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After his divorce from Garner, Affleck rekindled his relationship with Jennifer Lopez. The couple’s marriage lasted roughly two years. Lopez and Affleck married in 2022 and finalized their divorce in January 2025.
