Jennifer Lopez Files to Divorce Ben Affleck

The rumors are true: A trend of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez breaking up has repeated … again. 
 
High profile Hollywood couple have separated again, this after Lopez filed for divorce on Tuesday in L. A. County Superior Court, as was reported by The Associated Press. Per People, Lopez added the date of separation as April 26, 2024, while she filed the papers today, on the second anniversary of the couple’s fancy wedding in Georgia after eloping in Vegas in July of 2022. The Hollywood Reporter has contacted reps for both Affleck and Lopez and will update this story accordingly, though sources of information are unlikely to be forthcoming since the couple has remained tight-lipped in recent months about the state of their relationship. TMZ was the first to break the news. 
 
The filing comes right after a few months of wild stories about the couple selling a $65 million mansion, going out together or separately, without rings on their fingers, and stories about the source of conflict in maybe the most watched couple’s relationship in modern history. 
 
Looking back, one can see that there were clues. The torrent of tabloid pieces – not to mention countless tweets and Instagram posts – comprise not only Lopez’s solo summer trip to the Hamptons and Italy before that, but Affleck too who left behind a newly house-less and newly rented in Brentwood LA. She went to her Netflix movie Atlas solo, just as she was a loner in her biggest appearance this year in May where she co-chaired the most glamorous event in fashion, the Met Gala, which has traditionally been a no man’s land for Hollywood love birds. There was also a Bridgerton themed birthday bash in which she turned 55 in the Hamptons with no Affleck in the pictures. 
 
KPIX reported that Affleck, 51, met with Lopez, 54, in April a year ago when she called off an engagement with baseball star Alex Rodriguez and when Affleck broke up with actress Ana de Armas. One year later, Affleck followed a tradition of Cuban men and proposed Lopez while she was in a bathtub. The two had a very private wedding in Las Vegas in July 2022, and they had an elaborate Indian wedding in August 2022 in Affleck’s backyard in Georgia with life coach and podcaster, Jay Shetty officiating the wedding with Vogue in attendance. The bride wore a custom Ralph Lauren wedding dress, while the seats were filled with family and friends such as Matt Damon, filmmaker Kevin Smith and Affleck’s power agent, Patrick Whitesell of WME. 
 
They merged their families because Affleck came to the union already having three kids from a previous long-standing marriage to actress Jennifer Garner while Lopez had twins from a marriage to music mogul, Marc Anthony. They have many public outings these past two years at movie screenings for their respective movies, and other events such as the Grammy Awards. Some of those, like music’s biggest night or her The Mother premiere, created headlines around Affleck’s resting grumpy face to a rumoured red carpet quarrel even though they claimed everything was okay with their revived relationship. 
 
This year they brought another round of prens when Lopez released three new projects in a row an album entitled This Is Me … Now, a musical film that features the songs of the new album (This Is Me … Now) with the story of the couple, and a documentary about the filming of the musical film (The Greatest Love Story Never Told), which placed their love under the microscope as the fairytale that had become a reality. Lopez continuously mentioned Affleck as the author of the works and talked about him in interviews. 
 
“Now I feel like because Ben and I have rediscovered each other — and now that we’re married — I have something to offer,” she said to Variety last year with regard to her motivation for making the film. She also said in an interview that Affleck in particular was not ‘very comfortable’ with the swirl of projects. “But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist, and he’s gonna support me in every way he can because he knows I can’t stop doing the music I did  …  he does not want to stop me. But that does not mean he is okay with being the ‘muse. ’ ” 
 
He agreed with her that being in a public romance was not the easiest environs for him to inhabit. “So when we got back together, I stated, ‘Look, one of the things I do not wish is a social networking relationship. ’ Then I checked myself, as that is rather unfair to request. ” 
 
Nevertheless, it looks like being both the focus of the album and being objects of wild media attention placed some pressure. “Things that are private, I’d always felt, are sacred and special, because, in part, they’re private. So this was something of an adjustment for me,” he has said. 
 
It might come as a surprise to learn that Bennifer has its roots in the year 2001. Lopez and Affleck first crossed paths during the shooting of the romantic dramedy directed by Martin Brest Gigli, in 2003, it was released two years later and grossed terribly at the box office. Their love affair on the other hand proved durable and the two got engaged in 2002 upon which the actor got down on one knee to present the actress with a 6. 1-carat Harry Winston rock. But also that same year, Affleck had a cameo in Lopez’s ‘Jenny From the Block,’ a cut from the entertainer’s This Is Me … Then album.
“I believe what happened is that we became close friends when we were working together on set [during the making of the movie Gigli],” Lopez said when she was responding to Lowe’s questions in an interview he conducted with her. “We knew we were besotted with each other and looking at him after the movie I was crushing, and me – I had to manage my own business because I was coming out of a relationship at that time But it is like something clicks and you know this is the person I want to be with, over a period of months it is as much as we were allowed to we developed feelings for each other. ” 
 
But it never extended to the altar on its own. They would have gotten married after a lavish wedding ceremony, but the two called it quits on their relationship. ‘Ben and I broke up four days before the wedding and we had such grand wedding plans complete with fourteen ushers and bridesmaids, and three days to the wedding, Ben and I caved in to pressure,’ Lopez once said about a break up that took time to heal from. “It was really very difficult for all those years because I didn’t only feel as though I had lost a lover, I felt as though I had lost the best friend I ever had. I did not speak for so many years and I think it was the most painful part of it all. ” 
 
Lopez was married to Ojani Noa and Cris Judd, and engaged to Rodriguez before a four-year engagement that ended in marriage. Affleck was married to Garner (2005–2018). 
 
The curtain may seem to have finally fallen on Bennifer, but people are never too old to find a new Hollywood happy ending. “Sometimes it doesn’t work — and that’s sad,” said Lopez in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2011. “But I’m still an optimist when it comes to love, I still do and always will believe in love and it is still my biggest life dream. ”