Jennifer Lopez files for divorce: Ben Affleck relationship timeline and photos

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 she saw it as a “power move.”

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

Lopez also reflected on how she and Affleck were “carefree” and “so young and so in love” when they met in the early 2000s.

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

Lopez said she and Affleck reconnected after he contacted her via email, letting her know he had spoken well of her when asked to comment for an InStyle cover story about it.

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

“Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow up differently,” she said. “We two, lost and found.”

Affleck also shared heartfelt words about Lopez, saying “there’s something innately magical and kind and loving at the heart of who Jennifer is.”

“This is exactly the person I remember 20 years ago,” he continued. “Maybe she sees all the changes she’s made, whereas when I see her, most of the time I see someone who has kept, against the odds, the thing about her that has always made her the most incredible to me: a heart that seems boundless with love. She’s my idea of ​​the kind of person I want to be.”