Ben Affleck Reveals Where He Stands With Ex-Wife Jennifer Garner: ‘I’m Really Lucky’

While it may not seem like it, with the actor and father of three boasting two divorces, in a sit-down with GQ, Affleck shared how “lucky” he feels to have ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, as a co-parent, as he navigates the media circus that often surrounds his life.

“There’s nothing newsworthy at all about the day-to-day events of my life or the conversation I have with one person or another person that’s photographed. And often it’s like the big trick is to say So-and-so does this amid that, imply some correlation between the two. In other words, some broad event is taking place in some way, whether globally or around this person’s life,” Affleck said of the tabloid photos and headlines that are written about him — i.e. every time he looks glum while sipping on a Dunkin Donuts iced coffee. “And look, here they are frustrated with the parking meter. I’m definitely aware of the cosmic joke of it all.”

Affleck, who shares Violet 19, Seraphina, 16 and Samuel, 13, with Garner, said what helps him get through it, is focusing on what is really going on in his life, like his work and the time he spends with his family.

“What I’ve ended up focusing on is: Look, I know what’s going on in my life. And also, really more importantly, my kids know. We used to have a thing, my ex-wife and I, when they would see something on a supermarket stand, we would say, well, ‘You know this isn’t always true because if it were, you would have 15 brothers or sisters or whatever the number of stories is where they said that your mom was pregnant,'” The Accountant 2 star quipped. “And I’m really lucky that I have a really good co-parent and partner in Jennifer Garner, the kids’ mom, who’s wonderful and great and we work together well.”

While he said “it’s more of a headache than anything else,” Affleck, who admitted he’s still trying to figure out why he’s been the object of the media’s attention for more than three decades, said “there are certainly are worse things” he could be at the center of.

The candid interview also marked the first time Affleck has spoken about his split from the other Jen in his life, Jennifer Lopez.

While fans and much of the world saw what they believed were the early signs of trouble in paradise in Lopez’s Prime documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Affleck said what appeared to be frustration on his end at sharing some of the former couple’s more private moments, was anything but.

Part of it was, ‘Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination. Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things. And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?,” Affleck said of his participation in the doc.

He continued, “I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that. And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, ‘You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’ You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship.”

Affleck also made clear that their differing approaches to fame and being in the public eye were not the cause of their split.

“And I think it’s important to say that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture,” he stressed. “It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.'”

As for those issues, Affleck didn’t delve into those, but he did make clear that he has nothing but respect for Lopez, whom divorced the Good Will Hunting on August 20, 2024, just two years after the pair tied the knot after reconnecting two years after calling off their first engagement in the early aughts.

“This is somebody I have a lot of respect for… I have nothing but respect,” Affleck maintained. “I guess there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something. But honestly, like I said, the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.”

As for Lopez, while she’s remained fairly mum as to the reason for her and Affleck’s split, she did say that the weeks and months following their split were “lonely.”

“It feels lonely, unfamiliar, scary. It feels sad. It feels desperate. But when you sit in those feelings and go, ‘These things are not going to kill me,’ it’s like actually, I am capable of joy and happiness all by myself. Being in a relationship doesn’t define me,” Lopez said in an October conversation with Interview magazine.

“I can’t be looking for happiness in other people. I have to have happiness within myself,” she continued of finding herself single again at 55. “I used to say I’m a happy person, but was still looking for something for somebody else to fill, and it’s just like, ‘No, I’m actually good.'”