Ben Affleck opens up about being ‘trapped’ in marriage to Jennifer Garner, drank a bottle of scotch to escape

Now that he’s back with his old flame, Ben Affleck doesn’t seem to mind mincing words about his former marriage to Jennifer Garner.

While the Oscar winner’s battle with alcoholism has played out in the public eye, he made the stunning admission that he “probably still would have been drinking” were he still married to his ex-wife and mother of their three children.

“It’s part of why I started drinking … because I was trapped,” the 49-year-old “Armageddon” star revealed in a candid new conversation on Sirius/XM’s “The Howard Stern Show.”

“I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution,” he continued.

The couple were officially married from 2005 to 2018, even though they split in 2015.

We grew apart,” Affleck explained. “We had a marriage that didn’t work, this happens, with somebody that I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer. Ultimately, we tried. We tried, we tried because we had kids. Both of us felt like we don’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage.”

Affleck and Garner share three children: 16-year-old Violet, Seraphina, 12, and 9-year-old Samuel.

As for the actual breakup, he said the couple tried their best to end things amicably.

“Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over the custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes,” he shared. “But fundamentally, it was always underpinned with respect. I knew she was a good mom. I hope that she knew that I was a good dad. I was. I had to get sober — I knew that too — and I acknowledged that. I said, ‘You’re right. I’ve got to quit drinking.’”

Affleck has gone to rehab multiple times for alcohol addiction over the years, including in 2001, 2017 and 2018.

He told Stern that his kids were the reason he stopped drinking.

“I’m lucky because I hit that point before I lost the things that were most important. Not my career or money — it was my relationship with my kids, and when I felt as if it impacted them, I recognized it.”

Affleck is currently making the scene with Jennifer Lopez, who he was engaged to in the early 2000s.

He admitted to Stern he had some hesitations about reuniting with his superstar ex for Bennifer 2.0.

“My responsibility to my children is the highest responsibility,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything that is painful or destructive to them if I can help it.”