‘We crumbled’
Lopez opens up on 2003 split with Affleck
Jennifer Lopez has opened up on the events that led to the dissolution of her relationship with Ben Affleck more than 20 years ago in her new Prime Video documentary, The Greatest Story Never Told .
In the days leading up to their planned 2003 wedding, Lopez, now 54, recalls the pressure they both faced being a young power couple in the public eye.
“Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding,” Lopez says in the documentary (per Fox News). “We had a big wedding planned – 14 ushers and bridesmaids, and three days before we just crumbled under the pressure.”
“When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was this massive amount of scrutiny around our private life,” Affleck, 51, adds.
Affleck and Lopez started dating after they met on the set of Gigli and they were engaged from 2002 to 2004. Dubbed “Bennifer,” the twosome’s romance was tabloid fodder highlighted by glitzy movie premieres and a 6.1carat pink diamond engagement ring.
But the couple called off their wedding at the last-minute in 2003 and ended their relationship a few months later.
“Jennifer always saw Ben as the one that got away,” an insider told Page Six in 2021 after they renewed their romance. “She was crushed after they broke up, though she felt at the time that she had no other choice but to call off their engagement.”
In the years after their split, Lopez says she felt lost as she navigated her career as an actress and singer on her own.
“I didn’t just feel like I lost the love of my life, I feel like I lost like the best friend that I ever had. And I couldn’t talk for so many years, and that was the hardest part,” she says.
After their breakup, Lopez moved on with Marc Anthony, with whom she shares two children, while Affleck married Jennifer Garner and became a father to three. Both unions ended in divorce.
The former flames rekindled their old romance in April 2021 after Lopez broke off her engagement with retired baseball slugger Alex Rodriguez.
The breakup set them on a course of them both figuring out their lives away from one another.
“Our relationship crumbled under the weight of the pressure,” Lopez adds in a separate chat with Variety. “We lost a sense of ourselves, and we needed to separate because we didn’t know how to survive it. I had to figure myself out, and he had to figure himself out.”
The intimate new doc follows Lopez’s 20-year journey to self-love as she looks to reclaim and tell her own story.
If seeing their relationship play out in newspaper headlines caused cracks the first time around, Affleck candidly admits he was worried about how the pair would fair in a world dominated by social media.
“Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,’” the actor and director recalls in the doc (per People ). “Then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like, you’re gonna marry a boat captain and you go, ‘Well, I don’t like the water.’”
Affleck asks her whether now, after all these years, she’s been able to move past what went wrong in 2003.
“You think you’ve forgiven me all the way?” he asks.
“I think I was angry at you for a long time,” she replies. “But that heartbreak set both of us on a course to figuring ourselves out to being better people. I think I’ve forgiven you all the way. I think I need to forgive myself some things.”
The Greatest Love Story Never Told is streaming now on Prime Video.