Jennifer Lopez, featured on the latest Vogue cover set to release in December 2022, opened up about her relationship with Ben Affleck.
In the interview, JLo didn’t skimp on her feelings for her husband and explained why she took the actor’s last name and how they rekindled their romance after nearly two decades.
J.Lo discussed her decision to change her last name to Affleck saying, “People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.”
Recently the superstar received backlash from fans for taking her new hubby’s name.
When asked if she ever wanted Affleck to take on her name, she laughed saying, “If you want to know how I feel about [taking his last name], I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”
J.Lo also recounted how she and Affleck rekindled their romance. Supposedly, not long after Lopez and Alex Rodriguez broke off their engagement in 2021, she received an email from Affleck. Allegedly, a magazine requested a comment from Affleck about J.Lo for a story. Affleck decided to let her know that he’d provided a positive statement.
The comment was presumably meant for Lopez’s May 2021 InStyle cover story, where Affleck stated, “She remains, to this day, the hardest-working person I’ve come across in this business. She has great talent, but she has also worked very hard for her success, and I’m so happy for her that she seems, at long last, to be getting the credit she deserves.”
Not long after that, the couple started privately seeing each other again.
“Obviously we weren’t trying to go out in public,” she told Vogue. “But I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there. People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real.”
Lopez talked about the first time they started dating in 2002 and said how they were, “really very carefree, with no kids, no attachments. And we were just living our lives, being happy and out there. It didn’t feel like we needed to hide from anybody or be real discreet. We were just living out loud.”
However, things began to turn in a different direction. Lopez explained, “There was a lot underneath the surface there, people not wanting us to be together, people thinking I wasn’t the right person for him…I became very guarded because I realized that [the media] will fillet you. I really wish I could say more. I used to be like that. I am like that. But I’ve also learned.”
The couple found each other again and married in Las Vegas this past summer before celebrating their wedding in Georgia alongside family and friends a month later.
As for Affleck, his feelings haven’t seemed to change either. He said, “There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love at the heart of who Jennifer is. That’s exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago. Maybe she sees all the changes she’s made, whereas when I see her, mostly I just see someone who has retained, against the odds, the thing about her that always made her the most incredible to me: a heart that seems boundless with love. She is my idea of the kind of person I want to be.”
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