There's something particularly poignant about the news that Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck on the same day of their 2022 Georgia wedding. Until now, we've been intimately invited to be a part of their love story.
Lopez, as documented in a profile written for this magazine by Stephen Roderick, took a career risk with the album and feature film “This Is Me… Now.” The album is a love song from beginning to end about a journey of discovery that led Lopez to forgive herself and made her ready to accept Affleck’s love again. (The pair were together from 2002 to 2004, until they got engaged; they reunited and were first married in a Nevada church in July 2022, an event documented in Lopez’s song “Midnight Trip to Vegas,” followed by a private ceremony at Affleck’s Georgia compound the following month.) The film, for which Lopez spent $20 million of her own fortune, takes Lopez even further—finding Affleck, who appears as her on-screen lover, in his final moments. The film is accompanied by a behind-the-scenes documentary titled “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” in which Lopez and Affleck discuss the inspiration behind their work. In all, there are three distinct creative projects dedicated to the love these two shared.
Audiences rejected “This Is Me… Now” in all three forms. Lopez’s tour supporting the album was renamed a greatest hits collection — “Let’s Get Loud,” but let’s not get too personal — before it was canceled entirely. The cancellation of the tour fueled rumors that Lopez needed space to deal with developments in her marriage — and the ominous news, from the couple’s physical separation to the sale of their shared home, seemed relentless.
In light of what happened next, the whole This Is Me… Now project has a certain flack. One can sense, in the documentary, that Affleck is pushing himself to be supportive—he takes particular pleasure in looking at the equipment used by Lopez’s production. That’s a bright spot. But he makes a remark, speaking to the camera, that haunts the entire project: He clearly notes a certain irony in choosing “The Greatest Love Story Never Told,” the title he gave to the letters the pair exchanged back and forth as they reconnected, and then, well, telling them.
History has a way of repeating itself with this couple. When they first met as a couple, during the cultural moment they helped create, the pomp with which they showed their love—on the red carpet, in the streets, and at the movies—was so dazzling that it took them by surprise. They were young, charming celebrities with a certain sense of publicity: they announced their engagement in an interview with Diane Sawyer, and kissed in Lopez’s music video for Jenny From the Block. (The video was shot to mimic paparazzi shots—a clever way of appropriating the gossip industry’s means of production, or a concession that, despite being an intrusion, it’s still possible to be happy to have a picture taken of yourself with the one you love.)
This was the age of the supercouple: Bennifer had preceded by a few years Brangelina and Tom Cat, the couple of the crazy summer of 2005. They were more solid than Affleck and Lopez, and their use of the media seemed more mercenary. In Brad Pitt and Angelina’s W magazine photo shoot, in which they first showed off their couple, or in Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes, one could sense a clear awareness that it was good for the brand. (Pitt and Jolie, seen as superhuman, tended to gain points by flaunting their love; Cruise and Holmes, seen as crazy and in his grip, tended to lose. In both cases, the couple are now divorced.)
Affleck and Lopez were and remain flashy, quiet figures, and even their breakup felt like a soap opera, with a slow trickle of real estate news and art sales revealing what the former couple had been hiding. Just months ago, “This Is Me… Now,” in particular, with its depiction of the zodiac as gods in the sky and its focus solely on Lopez’s guiding of self-love, was completely wrong. It put Lopez’s personal life at the center of the literal universe, as well as her art. But there was something charming and moving about the couple, a quality that Pitt and Jolie lacked even in their prime. Affleck and Lopez were both willing to humiliate themselves for their love.
Affleck, who has spent years in rehab for alcoholism since winning his second Oscar (for “Argo”), has lately seemed like someone who is uncomfortable with his fame. Yet he has been willing to put himself in situations where he clearly feels uncomfortable. And Lopez — just five years after the peak of her career, when her 2020 Super Bowl came after her on-screen triumph in “Hustlers” — effectively destroyed her career in order to convey to the world how much she loves her husband. For some structural reasons related to how our society treats women, the couple’s first breakup set Lopez’s career, in particular, back years. With the grudge against her as strong as ever, it’s unclear how she’ll find her way back this time around.
But don’t write her off, perhaps: Lopez, as a celebrity, is a wit unmatched by her peers, and she has qualities that set her apart from her peers. Watching “This Is Me… So,” one is struck by how devoid of irony there is—a study in vicarious embarrassment, in part because of how openly Lopez opens up about a project that doesn’t work. She herself admits that the market doesn’t want it—she’s had recent successes in film and live performances of hit songs. “It’s not like anyone’s dying to see a new Jennifer Lopez album,” she tells the camera. But she can’t help it, any more than Affleck can help showing up at a random awards show, which clearly proves he doesn’t want to be there. They need to be together in public, but the publicity is, ultimately, the reason they can’t.
Their exploitation of their relationship wasn’t image management (which has now ruined their image on two separate occasions). It was simply the way they had to live. They weren’t Angelina’s pinnacle every time they were together. In the magnitude of their love and in the media’s embrace of their trio, they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—stars who married and divorced twice, and took the world on a journey as their work together blended with their complicated, painful, and profound love. Now, like Liz and Dick, Bennifer belongs to another, more serious age than ours.
