Ben Affleck recently reflected on his divorce from Jennifer Lopez months after it was finalized.
The ex-couple separated for the second time last year after a few years of high-profile marriage. Since then, they have been private about the details of their divorce and their current state as they navigate the aftermath.
Ben Affleck Opens Up About His Divorce from Jennifer Lopez
In a recent interview, Affleck opened up about his participation in Lopez's documentary Greatest Love Story Never Told and his thoughts now that he has separated from her.
"Part of it was, ‘Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination," he said.
"Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things."
Affleck continued, "And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?’ Because exactly what you said is true. I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that."
"And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, ‘Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’ You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship."
Ben Affleck Still Has Respect for Jennifer Lopez
Affleck emphasized in the interview that he still has huge respect for Lopez after their divorce and highlighted how they navigated their separation without any high-profile scandal.
"I hope I was clear that really this is somebody I have a lot of respect for. And I get wanting to divine or explore the kind of differences in perspective that we have in terms of how a person feels comfortable approaching the line between public and private life," he explained.
"But I really hope that whatever you use doesn’t suggest that I have any negativity or judgment or anything regarding that. I have nothing but respect."
The A-lister noted that "there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something" when you're in the public eye and "the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting."
"There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue. The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do," Affleck added.
"And as you get older, this is true for me, I assume it’s true for most people, there is no ‘So-and-so did this’ or ‘This was the big event.’ It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which— you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while.
He concluded, "For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly, they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable."
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