Like some sort of celebrity black hole sucking all of the shared couple’s exes into its vortex, the power of Bennifer 2.0 is truly boundless.
First, Jennifer Lopez’s ex Sean “Diddy” Combs chose chaos by posting a throwback photo of the one-time couple shortly after her rekindled romance with Ben Affleck began taking the internet by storm.
Then, the singer was spotted getting coffee with her ex-husband Marc Anthony. Now, Gwyneth Paltrow, who dated the actor in the late 1990s, has been pulled into the mess by a surprising source.
Earlier this week, a bold social media manager (or perhaps Paltrow herself) shared a throwback image of the former couple on Goop’s official Instagram account. In the picture taken at a fashion show, Paltrow is rolling her eyes as Affleck leans in close to whisper something in her ear — making it a perfect image for meme material.
Naturally, Paltrow was labeled “gemini szn,” Affleck dubbed “mercury in retrograde,” and the account captioned the image, “Tis the season.”
A seemingly embarrassed Paltrow has since weighed in, writing, “Oh my god you guys” in the comments.
The two stars, who were first introduced at a dinner hosted by disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, dated on-and-off from 1997 to 2000 and starred in two films together, Shakespeare In Love and Bounce.
After their break up, Affleck fell for Lopez and Paltrow married Coldplay frontman Chris Martin with whom she shares two children, Apple and Moses.
Affleck eventually married and had three children with his Daredevil co-star Jennifer Garner after calling it quits with Lopez in 2004.
Reflecting on their relationship years later, Paltrow said that she and Affleck, whom she once described as having a “very different sort of value system,” have managed to stay friendly.
“I think there’s certain boyfriends where you are trying to work stuff out, right? Like, you’re trying to heal certain stuff from your childhood and he was very much a lesson in that way,” she said on The Howard Stern Show in 2018.
“I’m not sure exactly what I was trying to heal in that instance, but it was ... he was, ya know, it was specific.”
As for Affleck and Lopez, their second shot at love appears to be picking up steam.
The former exes were spotted with their arms around each other at a PDA-heavy dinner date on Monday night, where onlookers described their behaviour as “very affectionate.”
While neither has officially confirmed that their romance is back on, the two have been spending time together regularly, recently shacking up in a Miami mansion after a much-discussed Montana getaway.
Affleck and Lopez are reportedly “slowly starting to talk about the future,” according to an unnamed People source, who told the outlet that the couple is “very happy together.”
“This is not a casual relationship,” the source said. “They are taking it seriously and want it to be long-lasting.”
In that case, somebody get eyes on Chris Judd because we’re going to hear from every one of their exes before this thing is all over.