It’s official: Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are over. Again.
Lopez filed for divorce on Tuesday, Aug. 20, in Los Angeles — on the two-year anniversary of their lavish Georgia wedding. Affleck, 52, and Lopez, 55, rekindled their relationship in 2021 after almost two decades apart. They’ve been dogged by split rumors for months with speculation about their separate lives going into overdrive in May.
“It’s sad, but it’s for the best,” one source who knows both Affleck and Lopez tells Yahoo Entertainment. “They are just different people when it comes down to it, but there’s been a lot of love there over the years.”
Neither Affleck nor Lopez has publicly commented on the split. Reps for the stars did not respond to Yahoo Entertainment’s requests for comment.
So what went wrong?
Multiple insiders tell Yahoo that certain issues that drove the superstars apart in 2004 — priorities, career ambitions, how much of their private life they choose to share — reared their ugly head again.
Affleck and Lopez have been open about some of their struggles and they’ve discussed how public scrutiny helped tear them apart 20 years ago. It seemed they had a better handle on things the second time around, striking a balance between the very public way Lopez likes to live her life and Affleck’s need for privacy.
“The catalyst for [our first breakup] was this massive scrutiny for our private life,” Affleck said in Lopez’s February documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told. “I had a very firm sense of boundaries initially around the press. While Jen I don’t think objected to it in the way I did, I very much did object to it. Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media.’ Then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask.”
That seemed to work … until it didn’t.
Sources close to the pair tell Yahoo that some in their inner circle noticed tension in their marriage escalated around the time of Lopez’s Affleck-inspired projects, including her album This Is Me … Now. She self-funded a $20 million corresponding film (This Is Me … Now: A Love Story) and documentary. Affleck participated in both and it was clear in the doc he was uncomfortable with certain things she decided to share.
On their first Christmas back together, Affleck gave Lopez a book of “every letter and every email” they ever wrote to each other, starting in 2001. While making her album, Lopez shared those personal messages with her songwriters for inspiration. That rattled the Oscar-winning actor.
“Jen was really inspired by this experience, which is how artists do their work,” Affleck said in the documentary. “As a writer, director I certainly do the same things. But things that are private I had always felt are sacred and special because, in part, they’re private. So this was something of an adjustment for me.”
Lopez added, “There’s the personal story of Ben and I that has never been told. I don’t think he’s very comfortable with me doing all of this. But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist, he’s going to support me in every way he can because he knows he can’t stop me from making the music I made and writing the words I wrote.” The singer admitted Affleck wasn’t entirely comfortable being her muse.
In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment in February, Lopez credited her and Affleck’s maturity with how they now handle public scrutiny. (“I feel very confident in knowing who I am and what I have to offer,” Lopez explained. “There’s not really anything anybody can say to shake that.”)
Affleck and Lopez’s interactions have been picked apart online since they got back together, but they did a good job of dismissing speculation. They even got in — and cashed in — on the “sad Affleck” joke with a Dunkin’ Donuts commercial for the Super Bowl in February. Lopez happily promoted her projects and gushed about her relationship with Affleck in the weeks that followed. Then there was a noticeable shift.
Lopez’s album flopped and her world tour, This Is Me … Live, was scaled back due to alleged weak ticket sales. In May, the media reported the couple was on the rocks after several high-profile solo appearances. Unbeknown to the public, the two were already separated — in Lopez’s divorce filing, she listed April 26 as the official date.
Affleck was absent from Lopez’s May 20 premiere of her new film Atlas and she didn’t talk about him or their relationship, shutting down press questions about the rumors.
On May 31, Lopez announced the cancellation of her This Is Me … Live tour. The singer explained in her newsletter that she was “completely heartsick and devastated” over the decision, but called it “absolutely necessary.” Concert promoter Live Nation added that she was taking time off to be with her “children, family and close friends.”
In the days that followed, she and Affleck put on a united front and made several public appearances together at graduations. Behind the scenes, they quietly put their $60 million mansion, which they purchased in May 2023, up for sale, fueling speculation they were dividing assets before officially pulling the plug on their marriage.
The estranged couple then spent the summer apart, with Lopez in New York and Affleck supposedly focusing on work in L.A. Their second anniversary on July 16 came and went without a mention from either. (When the pair eloped in Las Vegas, Lopez admitted at the time that she had “a little PTSD” as a result of calling off their dream wedding 20 years earlier.)
Lopez rang in her 55th birthday with a lavish Bridgerton-themed party and her husband was nowhere in sight. Instead, he was purchasing his own $20 million home in L.A. When Lopez returned to California in August, the last known time she and Affleck saw each other was on his birthday on Aug. 15. Five days later, she filed for divorce.
Lopez is clearly sending some kind of message with her filing. The fact she filed on Aug. 20 — the two-year anniversary of their wedding celebration — is significant. She filed for divorce herself without using a lawyer and, as of now, is technically self-represented.
Lopez “was done waiting,” one source told People. “She tried really hard to make things work and is heartbroken.”
