Jennifer Lopez Reveals How She and Ben Affleck Rekindled Their Flame

Jennifer Lopez finally shared the origin story for Beniffer 2.0 in a new interview with Vogue. Lopez and Ben Affleck reunited in April 2021, after Lopez and Alex Rodriguez called off their engagement. Affleck had also just gone through a breakup with Ana de Armas and had just recently praised Lopez in an interview. That set the stage for their reunion, which led to their marrying in July.

In early 2021, Lopez received an email from Affleck after their relationship ended. He wanted to tell her about the positive comments he gave a magazine about her, and that led to a conversation that never ended. They also began visiting each other privately, but paparazzi grabbed pictures of Affleck outside Lopez's mansion.

"Obviously we weren't trying to go out in public," Lopez told Vogue. "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. 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."

Affleck and Lopez started dating in 2002 after meeting on the set of Gigli. They got engaged in November 2002 but called things off in January 2004. They reportedly stayed in contact, and neither of them ever said anything negative about the other in the press. Lopez told Vogue she is as "stunned" as anyone else that they recaptured their love. "I don't know that I recommend this for everybody," the Hustlers star said. "Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently. The two of us, we lost each other and found each other."

Lopez did not want to discount anything that happened in between their relationships. After calling things off in 2004, Affleck went on to marry Jennifer Garner, with whom he shares three children. They split in 2018. Lopez was married to singer Marc Antony, with whom she shares twins, from 2004 to 2014.

"All we've ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you're very young and wonder if you can have that again," Lopez told Vogue. "Does it exist? Is it real? All those questions that I think everyone has. You go through all these relationships, and you're searching and you're connecting and you're disconnecting with people, and you're like, God, is this just what life is? Like a carousel, roller coaster, carnival ride? And then it settles. But the journey to that is the mystery for everybody."

In his comments to Vogue, Affleck said one of the things that attracted him to Lopez last year was the ways in which she has not changed in 20 years. "There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love at the heart of who Jennifer is," the Argo director said. "That's exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago. Maybe she sees all the changes she's made, whereas when I see her, mostly I just see someone who has retained, against the odds, the thing about her that always made her the most incredible to me: a heart that seems boundless with love." Affleck said Lopez was the "idea of the kind of person I want to be."