Jennifer Lopez believed that she and Ben Affleck were doing a better job at making their relationship work when the pair took their second shot at love.
The “Let’s Get Loud” singer, 55, spoke about how her rekindled romance with Affleck, 52, improved after their first brush with love just five months before they said “I do” in Las Vegas on July 16, 2022.
While promoting her movie “Marry Me,” Lopez told The New York Times that both she and Affleck had learned a big lesson from their 2004 breakup.
The lesson? “To hold it sacred,” she said, referring to their relationship. “You have to do what feels good to you all the time.”
“But at the same time,” she continued, “you learn from the past, you do things better the second time.”
“There’s a part of it that, yes, we’re together. But there’s a part of it that’s not, you know, being so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago.”
Striking an optimistic note, she added, “You can’t live life and think that things are just mistakes: I just messed up there, I messed up there. No, it’s all lessons.”
She explained, “It’s really what can you extrapolate from it that is going to help you grow and go to the next level of understanding yourself, finding yourself and being able to be at peace with your life, at peace with who you are.”
Affleck echoed his future wife’s sentiments when speaking with The Wall Street Journal in 2021, shortly after they got back together.
“One of the harder lessons that I have learned is that it’s not wise to share everything with the world,” Affleck said.
The “Argo” director also spoke of being grateful for “second chances.”
“I am very lucky in my life in that I have benefited from second chances, and I am aware that other people don’t even get first chances,” he said.
“I’ve had second chances in my career. I’ve had second chances as a human being. Life is difficult, and we are always failing and hopefully learning from those failures.”
In Affleck’s view, “The one thing you really need to avail yourself of the opportunities provided from that growth is the second chance.”
“I’ve definitely tried to take advantage of that,” he said. “I haven’t always been successful, but in cases in which I have, they’ve turned out to be the defining aspects of my life.”
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Lopez filed for divorce from Affleck on Tuesday, August 20, the second anniversary of their second wedding ceremony. The pair had spent the summer apart amid rumors a breakup was imminent.
The couple face an uncertain future, with their divorce potentially complicated by their apparent lack of a prenuptial agreement. Without a prenup, all their assets are fair game for their lawyers to fight over.
As for the cause of the relationship’s demise, reports have suggested that Lopez was “done waiting” for Affleck to show interest in fighting for their relationship.