A complete timeline of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s relationship

Lopez talks about how she and Affleck rekindled their romance and why she took his last name in a cover story for the December 2022 issue of Vogue.

In response to the backlash Lopez received for taking Affleck’s last name, the “Hustlers” star said that she viewed it as a “power move.”

“I’m very much in control of my own life and destiny and feel empowered as a woman and as a person,” she said. “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s OK, too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”

Lopez also reflected on her and Affleck being “carefree” and “so young and so in love” when they dated in the early 2000s.

“It didn’t feel like we needed to hide from anybody or be real discreet,” she said. “We were just living out loud, and it turned out to really bite us.”

Lopez said that she and Affleck reconnected after he reached out via email letting her know that he spoke highly of her when asked to provide a comment for a cover story for InStyle on her.

“I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there,” she said. “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 said that she wouldn’t recommend her and Affleck’s path to everyone. 

“Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently,” she said. “The two of us, we lost each other and found each other.”

Affleck also shared heartfelt words about Lopez, saying that “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,” he continued. “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.”