Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have been in the spotlight of a highly publicized divorce, with Lopez regularly offering details about their split, and Affleck remaining largely quiet on the matter. However, in a recent GQ cover story, Affleck has now revealed his feelings on the separation.

Halting a stream of rumors, Affleck firmly rejected the notion that his and Lopez’s divorce had something to do with his appearance in her 2024 documentary Greatest Love Story Ever Told.

>BEN AFFLECK IS ‘THRILLED TO BE SINGLE’ AFTER DIVORCE

“I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture,” he told GQ. “It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.’ 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 also shut down the rumors that he and Lopez split due to any kind of scandal, saying, “There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is, when you talk to somebody, [and they ask] ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do. 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.”

Affleck noted that he doesn’t like analyzing his relationship and break-up in such a public manner. “For one thing, you start going, ‘OK, clearly this person has got these issues,” he said. “Clearly, they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing…it feels vulnerable.”

He also noted that Lopez has a very different relationship with fame than he does. “There are a lot of people who I think could 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…And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?’ Because I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that.”

“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.”

Later in the interview, Affleck made sure he expressed his feelings for Lopez accurately, “I hope I was clear that really this is somebody I have a lot of respect for.” 

Affleck explained his hesitation to speak about the split: “There’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly…the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”

In October, Lopez said of her own experience, “I think to myself, ‘F—, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, God, I’m sorry it took me so long…”

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Article by Baila Eve Zisman

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