How Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck's Decision To Share Romance With Fans Backfired Later On
In 2021, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck made a romantic return that no one saw coming. She was on the heels of her breakup with fiancé Alex Rodriguez when Affleck realized they were both suddenly single at the same time. Their 2002 love story was revived 17 years after their split and the world was enraptured in Bennifer 2.0.
Fans easily got wrapped up in their love story because the duo was open about dating again. From their Instagram hard launch on her 52nd birthday to the revelation that he was writing her romantic emails while she was filming Shotgun Wedding in the Dominican Republic, Affleck was just as guilty of making his relationship public as J.Lo was. It was the press attention that was their downfall during their time together in the early aughts, so when they decided to get married in 2022, it’s understandable that the 51-year-old Oscar winner wanted to keep things more private.
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However, he and Lopez didn’t seem to be on the same page as she worked on a documentary about their love story for Amazon Prime, The Greatest Love Story Never Told. Just months after that massive promotional tour, the couple hit a rough patch in her marriage and she had to promote the movie, Atlas, for Netflix — and the media inquiries about their union didn’t stop. A source told In Touch that it was “a bit annoying that people are more interested in Jennifer’s marriage than the film” while conceding that it was “completely understandable” that the questions even happened in the first place.
“She’s promoted and gushed about her and Ben’s romance so much that her fans feel obligated,” the insider noted. “You can’t blame them. They truly want to know what’s going on.” Affleck shared his reticence about every move playing out in the public eye in his wife’s documentary. “When Jen and I broke up before the catalyst for that was this massive amount of scrutiny around our private life,” he said in the film. “I had a very firm sense of boundaries initially around the press while Jen I don’t think objected to it in the way I did. I very much did object to it.”
While it has been an issue in the past, Affleck swore that he was learning to meet Lopez in the middle the second time around. “Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,'” he explained. “And 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.’ We’re just two people with kind of different approaches trying to learn to compromise.”
However, the scrutiny from the fans, trolls on the internet, and the press can be a huge burden, especially when things aren’t going well in a relationship. Lopez and Affleck are learning this lesson the hard way, the second time around.
Before you go, click here to see a complete timeline of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s relationship.
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