It’s been six years since Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner called it quits; the couple started dating in 2004 after he called off his first engagement with Lopez.
After going out for one year, the two tied the knot in 2005. However, the former couple parted ways after spending ten years together in 2015, and their divorce was finalized in 2018.
Garner and Affleck first met in 2003 during the shooting of Daredevil. After falling in love with Garner, Ben proposed to her on her 33rd birthday, and they got married two months later.
The actors share three children together – two daughters, Violet, 16, Seraphina, 13, and one son Samuel, 10.
The couple co-parented their children since their split, and Garner has also been very supportive of Ben throughout these years.
According to Page Six, “She staged an intervention and got him to go to rehab in August 2018 for alcohol addiction, and even drove him to the clinic.”
In October 2020, Garner sat in an interview with PBS’ Kelly Corrigan and shared her struggle with the paparazzi while she was married to the Batman actor and called it a ‘total circus.’
“Anywhere that we went, it was a total circus. My one daughter tried to play soccer, and it was such a zoo for the families that they just said, ‘can you please not.’” She said.
“I’d go through a yellow light and there would be 15 cars that would go through the red light without compunction,” she added.
The Alias actress shared that the news outlets and photographers followed them everywhere, even when she had to take a sick child to the doctor’s clinic.
“For 10 years there were at the very least six cars, and often 20, outside of our house, and outside of school and at the pediatrician’s, and you’re begging them, ‘Please step aside from the pediatrician’s door. I have a sick kid, please.”
“Who cares about some dumb celebrity problem? Unless it’s your child going through it, it’s not worth anyone’s attention or bother. It’s a cost of doing business but it just got to be ridiculous.”
Ben Affleck was the center of the paparazzi’s attention in the late 1990s and the early 2000s as he moved from one serious relationship to another; the Argo actor dated Gwyneth Paltrow from 1997 to 2000.
In 2002 Ben started dating Jennifer Lopez, and the couple instantly became everybody’s ‘hot favorite’; fans started calling the duo ‘Bennifer.’
In 2004, after his split with Lopez, Affleck began his relationship with Garner, who coincidentally has the same first name as Lopez, and people started calling them ‘Bennifer 2.0.’
“I think there’s something about seeing yourselves reflected in news of some kind,” she told Kelly. “And whether it’s true or not, if it’s true and you are starting to be serious with someone and (the media) start saying, ‘Well when are they gonna be engaged?’ It’s almost like you just wanna get there so that you can complete that, and then maybe it’ll die down for a second.”
After staying together for almost a decade, the duo announced their divorce just a day after their 10th anniversary.
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Sources: Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan – E! News
