"She is the most extraordinary woman I have ever met. She is smart, talented and beautiful": Ben Affleck Finally Confirms His Enduring Love With Jennifer Lopez, Revealing Future Plans
Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck‘s relationship inspired her 2002 hit “Dear Ben,” and their romance provided even more inspiration when it was rekindled two decades later.
The couple were first linked in the early 2000s, with Lopez confirming their engagement to Diane Sawyer in November 2002.
The twosome eventually called off their wedding in early 2004. While Lopez married Marc Anthony later that year, Affleck moved on with Jennifer Garner. The duo both welcomed kids with their new partners.
Lopez and Anthony, who share twins Max and Emme, split in 2014 after a decade of marriage.
Affleck and Garner — parents of Violet, Seraphina and Samuel — split in 2015 after 10 years of marriage, finalizing their divorce in 2018.
While both Lopez and Affleck went on to have high-profile relationships following their respective divorces,
the twosome sent social media into a tizzy when they were spotted together in April 2021 following Lopez’s split from Alex Rodriguez.
Nearly one year after the pair reconnected, Lopez confirmed they had gotten engaged. They tied the knot in July 2022.
Keep scrolling for Affleck and Lopez’s best quotes about their relationship:
Jennifer Lopez Former Publicist Claims She Still Has Ben Affleck Engagement Ring
2002
"I'd probably say that he is brilliantly smart, loving, charming, affectionate. And I just admire him in every way. I respect him.
I feel like he teaches me things,” Lopez told Sawyer about then-fiancé Affleck in 2002.
“We talked about how people kind of see him with one type of person and me with another type of person, and the two of us together is like 'How did that happen?,'
and how we're probably more alike and from the same kind of background and, you know, same kind of upbringing and same kind of family and same kind of house.”
Jennifer Lopez’s and Ben Affleck’s Best Style Moments From the 2000s
“You can’t pinpoint it,” Lopez told Pat O’Brien during a joint interview with Affleck at their then-home in 2003. “We became friends first. That is the honest to God truth.”
2008 Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years A
When Affleck was asked about any regrets from his relationship with Lopez, he cited his role in her “Jenny From the Block” music video.
“If I have a regret, it was doing the music video,” he told the Daily Record in 2008. “But that happened years ago.
I've moved on. … It not only makes me look like a petulant fool, but it surely qualifies as ungentlemanly? For the record, did she hurt my career? No."
2012 Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
“I think Jen and I made a mistake in that we fell in love, we were excited and maybe too accessible,”
Affleck said during an interview on the British TV series Live in 2008. “I don’t think either of us anticipated the degree to which it would take on a world of its own.”
2014 Book Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
“It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,”
Lopez wrote about the split from Affleck in her 2014 book, True Love.
2014 Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
“It was probably my first big heartbreak,” the musician told Maria Shriver on the Today show in 2014 before addressing how quickly she moved on with Anthony.
“And to have one of my best friends who I’d known for years, who I actually love and did have chemistry with, come into my life and say, ‘I’m here’ …
What you need to know is, nobody can save you or heal you. Only you can do that for you.”
2014 B Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
Credit: Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock
“I really felt like I had found somebody great and he had found somebody great and we thought we could make it work,” Lopez told Hoda Kotb about Affleck in 2014.
Jennifer Lopez’s and Ben Affleck’s Best Style Moments From the 2000s
“[When I first met him] I felt like … ‘OK, this is it.’ [But] sometimes I feel like what you think people are and how you see them when you love them is different than when they reveal later,”
the Shades of Blue alum told Jess Cagle in 2016. “I think different time, different thing, who knows what could’ve happened, but there was a genuine love there.”
2016 B Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
After Affleck made headlines for a giant tattoo on his back in 2016, Andy Cohen asked the “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” singer about the ink.
”It's awful!" she exclaimed on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. "It has too many colors. His tattoos always had too many colors."
2020 Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
“I lost my sense of self, questioned if I belonged in this business, thought maybe I did suck at everything, And my relationship [with Ben] self-destructed in front of the entire world,”
she told Vanity Fair in 2018. “It was a two-year thing for me until I picked myself up again.”
January 2021 Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
The actor told The New York Times in 2020 that Lopez should have been nominated for an Oscar for her role in Hustlers.
"She's the real thing,” he said. "I keep in touch periodically with her and have a lot of respect for her. How awesome is it that she had her biggest hit movie at 50? That's f—king baller."
Jennifer Lopez’s and Ben Affleck’s Best Style Moments From the 2000s
2021
“People were so f–king mean about her — sexist, racist. Ugly, vicious s–t was written about her in ways that if you wrote it now, you would literally be fired for saying those things you said,”
Affleck said of Lopez on the Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast in January 2021. “Now it’s like she’s lionized and respected for the work she did, where she came from,
what she accomplished — as well she f–king should be! …
I would say you have a better shot — coming from the Bronx — of ending up as like [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor on the Supreme Court than you do of having Jennifer Lopez’s career and being who she is at 50 years old today.”
May 2021 InStyle Cover Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
2021
Affleck was quoted in Lopez’s May 2021 InStyle cover story.
“I thought I had a good work ethic, but I was completely humbled and blown away by what she was committed to doing day in and day out,
the seriousness in which she took her work, the quiet and dedicated way she went about accomplishing her goals, and then how she would go back and redouble her efforts,” he gushed.
“She remains, to this day, the hardest-working person I've come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success,
and I'm so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”
He added, “Where are you keeping the fountain of youth? Why do you look the same as you did in 2003 and it kind of looks like I'm in my 40s … at best?”
Lopez replied: “Ben is funny! He still looks pretty good too."
Ben Affleck Reflects on 'Beautiful' Jennifer Lopez Relationship: I'm 'Lucky' to Have 'Benefited From Second Chances'
2021
During an interview with WSJ. Magazine, Affleck said that the relationship is "definitely beautiful," but he wants to keep the details private.
"It’s hard to say who benefits more, without going into gossipy detail. I could just say that I feel great about being very healthy. And it is a good story. It’s a great story.
And, you know, maybe one day I’ll tell it. I’ll write it all out. And then I’ll light it on fire," the director said in the interview, published in December 2021.
"I am very lucky in my life in that I have benefited from second chances, and I am aware that other people don’t even get first chances. I’ve had second chances in my career.
I’ve had second chances as a human being. Life is difficult, and we are always failing and hopefully learning from those failures.
The one thing you really need to avail yourself of the opportunities provided from that growth is the second chance. I’ve definitely tried to take advantage of that.
I haven’t always been successful, but in cases in which I have, they’ve turned out to be the defining aspects of my life."
In the same interview, he hinted at a future wedding.
"Only in the last four years have I been able to not be so terrified, because I recognize I won’t die without work," he shared. "The most important thing is being a good father.
The second most important thing is to be a good man. And a good person. And, ostensibly, you know, a good husband. Hopefully."
Jennifer Lopez Sweetly Supports BF Ben Affleck’s New Film: He’s ‘Amazing in the Movie’
2022
Speaking to his friend Matt Damon for an Entertainment Weekly cover story, the Tender Bar star said he considered meeting Lopez to be the silver lining of making Gigli.
He also credited the box-office bomb with helping him figure out that he wanted to do more behind the camera.
"If the reaction to Gigli hadn't happened, I probably wouldn't have ultimately decided, 'I don't really have any other avenue but to direct movies,'
which has turned out to be the real love of my professional life," he said in January 2022. "So in those ways, it's a gift. And I did get to meet Jennifer, the relationship with whom has been really meaningful to me in my life."
Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
2022
“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,”
Lopez told The New York Times in a February 2022 profile. “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. … 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.
[Alex] did what he did. And it was fine. The relationship stuff had nothing to do with being public or not being public.”
She continued: “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.”
Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years
2022
“I just want my future to be full of love and happiness, with my children and my partner,” the Marry Me star told People in February 2022.
“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.
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.”
She added that their romance is “a beautiful love story.” Lopez explained: “What I can teach my children is that real love exists. Some things can be forever, but it doesn't mean they just have a straight line."
Engagement Details Jennifer Lopez Reveals How Ben Affleck Proposed
2022
In an April 8 "On the JLo" newsletter, Lopez revealed that she got engaged. Days later, she revealed that she was shocked when her love proposed while she was taking a bath.
"I was taken totally off guard and just looked in his eyes smiling and crying at the same time trying hard to get my head around the fact that
after 20 years this was happening all over again, I was quite literally speechless," she wrote, in part.
The "Marry Me" singer continued, recalling, "I was smiling so big and tears were coming down my face, feeling so incredibly happy and whole.
It was nothing fancy at all, but it was the most romantic thing I could’ve ever imagined...just a quiet Saturday night at home, two people promising to always be there for each other.
Two very lucky people. Who got a second chance at true love."
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez married in Las Vegas
2022
"We did it. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient," Lopez wrote in her July 2022 "On The JLo" newsletter, released hours after she married Affleck in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony.
"When love is real, the only thing that matters in marriage is one another and the promise we make to love, care, understand, be patient, loving and good to one another," she explained.
"We had that. And so much more. Best night of our lives."
She added that they are happy to have the love of their children as they start this new chapter. "They were right when they said, 'all you need is love'.
We are so grateful to have that in abundance, a new wonderful family of five amazing children and a life that we have never had more reason to look forward to," she wrote.
"Stick around long enough and maybe you’ll find the best moment of your life in a drive through in Las Vegas at twelve thirty in the morning in the tunnel of love drive through, with your kids and the one you’ll spend forever with. Love is a great thing, maybe the best of things-and worth waiting for."
Jennifer Lopez Calls Initial Ben Affleck Split Her 'Biggest Heartbreak'
2022
Lopez called her early 2000s split from Affleck the "biggest heartbreak of my life" while discussing her ninth album, This Is Me ... Now, in November 2022.
"I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn't get it right," she said during an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, calling Affleck "the love of my life."
The songwriter went on to recall how pressure from the public eye "destroyed" the couple's first shot at romance. "It felt, at times, unfair, but neither one of us is that person to be like,
'Woe is me,'" she noted. "So we were like, 'Well, we just got to dust it off and keep it moving.' I think, in the weirdest way, that it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing. ...
It fueled us in a weird way that we felt we had to prove ourselves again."
Ben Affleck: 'Brilliant' Jennifer Lopez 'Helps Me in Every Conceivable Way'
2023
Affleck gushed about his wife at the March premiere of his film Air.
"She's brilliant," he told Entertainment Tonight of Lopez during a red carpet interview. "[She] helps me in every conceivable way."
Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years 2024
2024
During a February appearance on Australia’s “Kyle and Jackie O Radio Show,” Lopez said that she needed to “figure herself out” after her split from Affleck.
“I fell in love with the love of my life [earlier in life] and for whatever reasons, we needed to grow and do other things,” she said.
“We both went off and had children with other people and other relationships, but you know in my mind I kind of had it like, ‘Oh, that was kind of the one.'”
Lopez added that it wasn’t until she felt “good on [her] own” that the timing was right for her and Affleck.
“That’s when the universe kind of opened up to me and was like, ‘OK, now you’re ready,’” she explained. “I couldn’t believe it and I don’t think he could either.
It’s not something we ever planned. We really had moved on with our lives but when we reconnected, it was almost instant and we just knew.”
This Is Me Everything Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez Have Said About Their Relationship Over the Years 2024
Credit: Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
2024
Lopez gushed about Affleck’s unending support while promoting her album This Is Me … Now and its accompanying musical narrative film, This Is Me … Now: A Love Story, during a February appearance on Today.
"He's always supportive of whatever I'm doing. And he knows that I'm a creative person and I'm an artist, and I'm going to express myself,” she said.
“I don't think anybody really understood what I was trying to do [with the project] and that made it hard. … But he was always kind of like, 'You can do this. Whatever you want to do. I believe in you, so you go and do your thing.’”
