Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck rekindled their relationship and tied the knot this year, but the singer still recalls the heartbreak of calling off their initial wedding nearly two decades ago.
“It was so painful after we broke up,” Jennifer told Zane Lowe in an Apple Music interview. “Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. I honestly felt like I was going to die.”
“It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn’t get it right,” the actor continued. “But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most ‘would never happen in Hollywood’ ending.”
Jennifer and Ben met in 2001 on the set of their famous box office flop Gigli and got engaged in 2002. Their relationship ― coined “Bennifer” ― was chronicled relentlessly by paparazzi.
While they planned to cement that relationship with a star-studded ceremony in 2003, the celebrity couple postponed their wedding “due to the excessive media attention.” They called it quits the following year.
“Jennifer Lopez has ended her engagement to Ben Affleck,” a representative told People at the time. “At this difficult time, we ask that you respect her privacy.”
The tabloid tragedy turned into a Hollywood fairytale when the pair rekindled their relationship in 2021 after her split from Alex Rodriguez.
They married in July 2022 and followed up their private Las Vegas elopement with a more traditional ceremony at Ben’s Savannah, Georgia, property in August.
Jennifer is currently promoting This Is Me…Now ― a follow-up to This Is Me...Then, an album she released the same month she and Ben initially got engaged two decades ago.
She told Zane Lowe the record “captured me at this moment in time when I was reunited with the love of my life and we decided we were going to be together forever.”
“Now I think what the message of [the album] is — if you have, like me at times, lost hope, almost given up, don’t,” Jennifer said. “True love does exist and some things do last forever and that’s real. I want to put that message out into the world and that does take a lot of vulnerability.”