Jennifer Lopez Reveals Her Regrets While Dating Ben Affleck the First Time Around
The mega star shares the juicy deets in a new interview for the December issue of 'Vogue.'
It’s been just about four months since Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck tied the knot, and so far it seems the two are really enjoying their recently renewed relationship bliss.
If things seemed too quiet on the Bennifer front however, fans are about to get all the deets they’ve been patiently waiting for.
The star of Vogue’s December issue, JLo provides a heartfelt-but-juicy interview loaded with details about her happy ending. What happened when they broke up? How did they get back together? How has life been since? Here are a few pieces of the singer and actress’s life she’s opened up about.
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She has regrets about her first round with Affleck
The first time Affleck proposed to Lopez in 2002, he did it with a pink, six-carat diamond ring. Two years later, the engagement was officially called off, and the couple went their separate ways.
“We were so young and so in love at that time, really very carefree, with no kids, no attachments,” JLo explains. “And we were just living our lives, being happy and out there. It didn’t feel like we needed to hide from anybody or be real discreet. We were just living out loud.”
Bennifer’s relationship received a lot of scrutiny on and off camera however, as the tabloids and pop culture constantly dug into their relationship.
“It turned out to really bite us,” she adds. “There was a lot underneath the surface there, people not wanting us to be together, people thinking I wasn’t the right person for him.”
Lopez admits that she’s learned a lot of lessons since then, and she “became very guarded” as a result. The second time around, her relationship with Affleck was much more discreet, and it seems to have paid off in the long run.
She chose to take her husband’s last name
Not everyone was pleased that Jenny from the Block chose to become “Mrs. Affleck,” but she also doesn’t really care.
“People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez,” she explains in the interview. “But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that.”
It appears she’s more of a traditional gal than many realized, indicating that having Affleck change his last name to Lopez “doesn’t have any romance to it.”
Going the traditional route doesn’t diminish the power star’s star power, however.
“I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person,” she adds. “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too.”
She’s co-parenting like a champ
Both she and Affleck created a new, larger family when they bonded for life. The two are charged with caring for Lopez’s teenage twins, whose father is Marc Anthony, and three children Affleck shares with former wife Jennifer Garner.
Lopez refers to Garner in the interview as “an amazing co-parent” and that the two superstars “work really well together.”
“What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him [Ben Affleck],” she states. “Someone who really loves and cares about them but can have a different perspective and help me see things that I can’t see with my kids because I’m so emotionally tied up.”
She always knew Ben was “the one”
Despite what Vogue describes as “four marriages, two broken engagements, and assorted misbegotten alliances over 25 years,” Lopez never gave up hope of finding her happy ending.
“We lost each other and found each other,” she elaborates. “Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too….But I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there.”
This time around, she and Affleck were more low-key, and the spark was definitely reignited.
“People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real,” she explains. “I’m super proud of who I am today, and I wouldn’t change a f*cking thing.”
