Ben Affleck Chokes up Talking About ‘Painful’ Divorce From Jennifer Garner Amid Sobriety Battle

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner announced their separation in 2015 after 10 years of marriage, officially divorcing in 2018. Affleck recently opened up about their relationship and the breakdown of their marriage in a recent interview with the New York Times in which he discussed his drinking, and further addressed the issue during a new interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America.

“I never thought that I was gonna get divorced. I didn’t want to get divorced. I didn’t want to be a divorced person. I really didn’t want to be a split family with my children,” Affleck said. “And it upset me because it meant I wasn’t who I thought I was, and that was so painful and so disappointing in myself.”

Affleck and Garner share three children, Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, 7. Affleck has gone to rehab twice in the past three years and was always worried about the impact his drinking might have on his kids.

“I really don’t want my children to pay for my sins,” he said. “Or to be afraid for me. Which is one of the hard parts of being the child of an alcoholic. Do you think, ‘What if my dad gets drunk? What if he does something stupid? What if he ends up on TMZ and it’s on my news feed and other kids see it?’”

The TMZ video he referenced was taken in late 2019 and showed Affleck, seemingly drunk, stumbling outside of a Halloween party in Hollywood. After the clip circulated, he shared that he took time to focus on his kids.

“I took the last half of the year off and I just got to be dad. Drive them to school, pick them up. Go to the swim meet, come home. That’s where the parenting happens,” he said. “It’s in the cracks. It’s in the moments when you’re just taking them back from soccer and they say something profound or they talk about how they’re really feeling about something and it’s like that’s where you get to be the parent. That’s the joy of it. And that’s what I don’t want to miss.”

“Divorce is very painful and alcoholism is very painful,” he continued. “They just are. If there’s something that your child is suffering, that’s a level of pain that is not easily gotten past, not easily forgiven, not easily forgotten. And it’s hard. You’re not going to avoid causing your kids pain, all pain. Pain is part of life. I take some comfort in that. I’m doing my very, very best… It has to be good enough. I don’t really have a choice. I have to be the man I want to be at this point. I don’t have anymore room for failure of that kind.”

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