Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, and their on-and-off relationship is a saga full of twists and turns. It’s said that the course of true love never runs straight, but that’s also true for relationships that fail. It feels fairer to say that love is never simple, but JLo is adamant about learning from failure.
Speaking in an interview with British Vogue, Lopez spoke out about her ongoing divorce from Affleck and shared the clever way she reframes her “hardships” so she can learn from them. For Lopez, bad things don’t happen to her, but for her.
“I think the way I overcome things is not by thinking of them as happening to me but happening for me and what is the lesson that needs to be learned in the moment.”
As part of the way she reframes events, Jennifer says she has an important question she asks herself: “What can I learn and how can I come out the other side better, stronger, more knowledgeable and kind of evolve and grow from this point?”
This approach to negative events is a good one, and if it works for Lopez, that’s great news. Many times in life we have lessons we can learn even if we’d really rather not, and it takes a whole lot of guts and self-awareness to learn from personal traumas like a divorce.
Lopez and Affleck’s relationship — both times — has been a matter of public interest. The first time around, when the pair dated from 2002 to 2004, the intense media scrutiny and attention proved too much, and the couple split. But clearly, the split wasn’t permanent (at least not the first one) and Affleck and Lopez rekindled their romance after their respect breakups and got married in 2022.
During the time between, both Lopez and Affleck married others and started families — Lopez got hitched to singer and actor Marc Antony, and Affleck married actress Jennifer Garner. But when those marriages broke down, the allure of what could have been proved too much, and the pair reunited… until their separation pending divorce in 2024.
In the British Vogue interview, Lopez is clear that she doesn’t believe in coincidences. For her, things don’t happen randomly, whether good or bad. “It’s happening for a reason,” she says, a life lesson designed to teach her what she needs to grow and move on as a better person.
Amid the swirling rumors, Lopez must feel like she’s being bombarded with one life lesson after another, whether it is news and speculation about her long-ago relationship with disgraced rapper and producer Sean “Diddy” Combs, reports that Affleck and his ex-wife Jennifer Garner might be heading for a romantic reunion, and her reportedly chaotic divorce from Affleck. Garner was reportedly very supportive of Lopez’s marriage to Affleck and is in a committed relationship herself, so such rumors seem unlikely to be true — not that makes them any easier to hear.
Reports suggest that the divorce is becoming acrimonious and aggressive, and there are rumors that Drake is slipping into her DMs — again — although Jennifer has sworn off a rebound relationship. With all the trials and tribulations happening to her — sorry, for her — J-Lo must be feeling quite enlightened these days.