Jennifer Lopez is opening up about her “second chance” with Ben Affleck.
In two new interviews, the Marry Me star, 52, gives rare insight into their rekindled romance — or, as she calls it, their “beautiful love story.”
J.Lo told People magazine she’s “lucky and happy and proud” to have Affleck as her partner again, nearly two decades after they called off their engagement.
“It’s a beautiful love story that we got a second chance,” she said, adding, “I’ve never been better.”
She admitted there was “a little bit of fear” when they reconciled last spring. But “it feels very different than it was years ago.”
When they were together from 2002 to 2004, “We kind of put [our relationship] out there and we were naïve and it got a little trampled.” Now, “We both were like, ‘Wow, we’re so happy and we don’t want any of that to come into play again.’ We’re older now, we’re smarter, we have more experience, we’re at different places in our lives, we have kids now, and we have to be very conscious of those things. We’re so protective because it is such a beautiful time for all of us.”
While there was gossip that Lopez was upset with Affleck after recent comments he made about the mother of his three children, Jennifer Garner, Lopez only heaped praise on The Tender Bar actor — and the emotional work he’s done to better himself in recent years.
“I’m so proud of the man he’s become that I’ve watched from afar,” she said. “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.”
As for combining their family — her 13-year-old twins with Marc Anthony and Affleck’s three children with Garner — Lopez said it’s worth the work.
“I honestly believe that love rules all. Love always conquers everything — relationships, kids, work, work relationships,” she says. “When you’re in a good, healthy relationship, everybody benefits from that. Everybody.”
Lopez, who has been married three times and engaged twice, isn’t etching in stone what her future holds amid Bennifer 2.0. She just wants it “to be full of love and happiness, with my children and my partner. 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.”
The piece pointed out that Lopez sat for the interview in a “sun-drenched room in her house that’s become Affleck’s office when he’s there.” A second interview, with the New York Times, noted that Lopez sat for the interview in a room decorated for Christmas that boasted “a giant gingerbread house that’s iced with the words ‘Affleck Lopez Family.'”
The New York Times reporter shared that their request to speak to Affleck for the piece was denied, but he was very present during the sit-down, which is to plug Lopez’s new rom-com co-starring Maluma and Owen Wilson. It said Affleck arrived, backpack over his shoulder, and interrupted the interview. He pulled Lopez out of the room. Ten minutes later, they returned “only to embrace, kiss and whisper ‘I love you'” and call each other “baby” in front of the interviewer, who was left to wonder if the “peculiar moment” was planned or spontaneous, seemingly deciding on the latter.
In conversation with the NYT, Lopez was asked about conversations she and Affleck had before deciding to go public with their reunion last year — and whether they strategized how they would handle the media frenzy.
“I would say we learned our lesson the first time,” she said, noting the lesson is, “To hold it sacred. 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. 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.”
Asked about the engagement to Alex Rodriguez she ended right before leaping back in with Affleck, a relationship that was anything but private, Lopez said, “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. He did what he did. And it was fine. The relationship stuff had nothing to do with being public or not being public.”
What she learned from that breakup and the rest of her relationship ups and downs is, “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.”
