Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s Marriage Is Dead. Here’s the Obituary.

The Washington Post / Emily Yahr

12:08 JST, August 21, 2024

Bennifer, the alluring union (and disunion, then reunion) of Hollywood and pop music royals Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, has died after a long bout of public discord and a TMZ report, confirmed by People magazine, that Lopez filed for divorce Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court – two years after their 2022 wedding. The couple’s relationship, this time, was about 3½ years old.

It was a second death for the seemingly unlikely yet curiously inspired pairing, which combined Affleck’s and Lopez’s first names and formed a 21st-century powerhouse portmanteau that both gave and took away hope for a celebrity-obsessed American culture.

The split between Lopez, who turned 55 in July, and Affleck, who turned 52 last week, comes after a long period of rumors that their marriage was on the rocks, and the breakup comes more than two decades after their first wildly public romance, engagement and eventual parting.

In 2004, the couple officially called it quits shortly after they canceled their wedding when the relationship buckled under the glare of media attention, gossip and a nation’s unsatiable fixation. In shorthand, Bennifer ushered in a new era of celeb romance watching, name-smooshing and tabloid sagas not seen since the days of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s repeat pairings and breakups.

In early 2021, an older and wiser Affleck and Lopez shocked the world by announcing that they were back together, and Bennifer 2.0 was born at the perfect moment, about a year into covid-19, when people desperately needed a distraction. Plenty of theories emerged about why Affleck and Lopez’s attraction to each other carried such public resonance: Society is programmed to be fascinated by beautiful, famous people who are in love. Fans project their own hopes and dreams about romance onto celebrities. This relationship remains spectacular gossip. When together, Affleck and Lopez just had that ineffable “it” factor that is hard to describe.

“Celebrities hook up all the time and particularly on movies in which they co-star. But they don’t seem to tantalize the public quite like these two did,” gossip columnist George Rush told us back in the early days of Affleck and Lopez’s reunion, recalling the tips that streamed in years ago when he covered the first iteration of their relationship. For a celebrity couple to truly capture the culture’s imagination, he added, “They have to be physically magnificent, and also have a place in Hollywood that’s worthy of each other.”

Bennifer’s origins trace back to late 2001 on the set of “Gigli,” a mobster rom-com that became synonymous with box-office bombs. Lopez was married to choreographer Cris Judd at the time, but by the following summer she had filed for divorce and she and Affleck were spotted together all over Manhattan. Paparazzi and the public were obsessed; Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block” music video mocked the scrutiny they were receiving on a daily basis. By the end of the year, after the gossip magazines and bloggers had coined the nifty combination of their names, a practice that continues to this day for famous couplings, Affleck and Lopez confirmed their engagement with a $2.5 million pink ring.

They called off their September 2003 wedding days before it was scheduled to take place, blaming the extreme amount of media attention. By January, a breakup was confirmed. The world moved on, and so did they. Affleck married Jennifer Garner, with whom he had two daughters and a son; Lopez married Marc Anthony and had twins – a son and a daughter.

But both divorced their respective spouses (Lopez in 2011, Affleck in 2015) and, despite other high-profile relationships that followed, found themselves single at the same time several years ago.

When they reunited, a natural question arose: If a relationship couldn’t survive under the glare of the spotlight two decades ago, what chance did it have in the chaos of today’s world? That was always going to be the test, and for a while, it seemed like they could, in their older and wiser years, withstand the intensity of celebrity romance in the social media age. In interviews, they spoke about how much they loved and admired each other. They attended red-carpet events even though Affleck projected a “sad Affleck” mood that became a meme. Lopez used her newsletter, “On the J-Lo,” to reveal the details of their engagement (this time, a green ring reportedly worth millions) and their spontaneous Las Vegas wedding in July 2022, followed by a more traditional exchange of vows on Aug. 20, 2022; Lopez’s divorce filing came two years later to the day.

This past February, they let go of even more privacy. Lopez released a new album, “This Is Me … Now,” accompanied by a confounding star-studded musical film set in a “heart factory” that analyzed Lopez’s personal and romantic life, along with a documentary that chronicled the making of the album and film. Lopez revealed she spent $20 million to finance the project.

Affleck was featured in the documentary (titled “The Greatest Love Story Never Told”) and was candid that he was anxious with the public seeing such a deep dive into their relationship. In one scene, Lopez let her fellow songwriters and producers look through letters and emails that she and Affleck had written to each other over the years, purportedly as inspiration for the music.

“I did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that it’s the greatest love story never told, and if you’re making a record about it – that seems kind of like telling it,” Affleck said wryly at one point.

Lopez recognized this: “I don’t think he’s very comfortable with me doing all of this,” she told the cameras. “But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist, and he’s going to support me in every way he can, because he knows this is – he can’t stop me from making the music I made, and writing the words that I wrote. … That’s going to happen, and he doesn’t want to stop me.”

Affleck concurred, but also recognized this was Lopez’s way of expressing herself. “Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media.’ And then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like, you know, you’re going to marry a boat captain and you go, ‘Well, I don’t like the water,’” he said. “We’re just two people with kind of different approaches, trying to learn to compromise.”

Things soon went awry. Lopez’s album flopped and her summer tour was rebranded as a “greatest hits” show. In May, Lopez attended the Met Gala alone, and tabloids realized that the couple hadn’t been photographed together in about six weeks. Details started to leak out in the press from anonymous sources: They were living apart. There was “tension” in the marriage. Lopez chided a reporter for asking about the rumors. The tour was canceled. Bennifer headed for another sunset, taking most of the dream with it, but perhaps not all. Check in 20 years from now.