Rumours have been swirling for months now that Hollywood golden couple JLo and Ben are on the rocks, but a clean break would never be easy with their family lives so heavily intertwined.
The couple are parents to five children – Emme Maribel Muñiz and Maximilian Muñiz from Lopez’s previous marriage to Marc Anthony, and Violet Affleck, 18, Fin Affleck, 15, and Samuel Affleck, 12, who Affleck shares with ex-wife Jennifer Garner.
Lopez and Affleck had seemingly mastered the blended family, forming close bonds with each other’s children and often pictured in public sharing special family moments – making their rumoured split all the more complicated.
The A-list couple’s reunion was a fairytale ending to a romance that spanned decades. But the spark that brought them back together appears to have soon dwindled, with those close to the couple telling Us Weekly that Ben is ‘worn down’ by the relationship and the ‘honeymoon phase has worn off’.
Despite being married for less than two years, the couple has decided to take some time apart to assess whether their marriage is ‘right for both of them’, an insider told the publication.
It’s thought that the pair are now living separately in LA, with Affleck moving into a $100,000-a-month property in Brentwood earlier this month (May), while Lopez has stayed in the couple’s $60 million ‘dream home’ in Bel Air with their children. The couple are still putting on a united front despite their difficulties, keeping their wedding bands on despite living apart.
Most recently, Affleck and Lopez attended a High School graduation party together on Thursday (30th May) to mark the occasion for Ben’s daughter Violet, whom he shares with ex-wife Jennifer Garner, in LA.
Considering the close bond JLo has with Affleck’s children and his ex-wife, who according to a source from US Weekly is ‘encouraging Ben to work on his marriage’, it’s no surprise that the singer and actress would want to share this important milestone.
Lopez, 54, and Affleck, 51, rekindled their romance in 2021 – much to the delight of original ‘Bennifer’ fans in the ’00s – and tied the knot in 2022 in Las Vegas, 20 years after they first met.
Getting together later in life, both with previous marriages and children in tow, meant that Bennifer became one big blended family – with Lopez embracing the role of stepmother wholeheartedly.
The global superstar wasted no time getting to know Ben’s three children, Violet, Fin and Samuel and gushed over their idyllic family life, calling her five children ‘blessings’ while speaking with Extra in early 2023.
‘It’s going really, really well; it’s amazing. We have five beautiful, beautiful children, blessings,’ Lopez revealed to a reporter on the red carpet while promoting her new film Shotgun Wedding.
‘We dropped one of them off at school today and we were just kind of thinking about what our lives have become and just feeling so blessed and grateful for where we wound up in our lives.’
Ben also became a stepfather to JLo’s twins Emme Maribel and Maximilian and the couple moved the five children into their Bel Air mansion.
Cue heartwarming snaps of family days out and what seemed like the perfect blended family, with Garner, whom Affleck is famously on good terms with, still firmly in the picture.
The couple even brought along their five shared children to France to celebrate their honeymoon in July 2022, with pictures emerging of the whole brood enjoying a peaceful river trip together.
Affleck and Lopez looked relaxed, chatting to the children as they enjoyed games on the deck and soaked up the sunshine.
Lopez described becoming a stepmother as an ’emotional transition,’ but also ‘all your dreams coming true’.
Speaking on the TODAY show last year, Lopez said, ‘We moved in together. The kids moved in together. It’s been, like, a really kind of emotional transition, but at the same time all your dreams coming true.
‘It’s just been a phenomenal year. Like, my best year I think since my kids were born.’
Lopez has spoken previously about the importance of being a support for Ben’s children, telling Vogue in 2022: ‘What I hope to cultivate with our family is that his kids have a new ally in me and my kids have a new ally in him, someone who really loves and cares about them but can have a different perspective and help me see things that I can’t see with my kids because I’m so emotionally tied up.’
While Affleck told the publication that when it comes to his wife: ‘There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love’.
Before adding: ‘That’s exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago. 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.’
Fin Affleck and Emme Maribel Munniz have also struck up a close friendship since the families moved in together.
Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck‘s 15-year-old Fin, formerly known as Seraphina Rose, and Emme, 16, have been regularly spotted strolling around Los Angeles, sometimes hand in hand.
Last year the step-siblings were pictured enjoying the rides at Disneyland with Ben’s ex-wife Jennifer Garner, who is regularly pictured spending time with Lopez’s children.
Garner is thought to be in full support of Lopez and Affleck working on their marriage, despite telling Vanity Fair that Ben was still ‘the love of my life’ in 2016 after the couple had separated.
A source told US Weekly: ‘Jennifer Garner is encouraging Ben to work on his marriage to Jen. She fully supports their relationship and wants nothing more than for him to be happy.’
The insider also said that Garner can relate to how the spotlight of fame ‘can put a strain’ on relationships.
Garner and Affleck have maintained a strong bond despite ending their marriage, both publicly discussing their enduring bond and commitment to co-parenting.
‘He’s the most brilliant person in any room,’ Garner told Vanity Fair a year after their divorce in 2016. While Ben referred to his ex-wife as ‘a superhero mom,’ when speaking to E! Online that same year.
But one less predictable relationship to emerge after the couple’s separation was Garner’s new-found friendship with Ben’s new girlfriend, old flame Jennifer Lopez.
‘Bennifer’ was one of the most high-profile unions of the ’00s and Ben’s marriage to Garner followed swiftly after the couple’s very public breakup in 2004.
But despite both being entangled in Affleck’s complicated love life, the two women have been nothing but glowing about one another.
It’s reported that the pair got closer after Lopez and Affleck reunited in 2021, with Garner, who had already firmly established herself as a solid co-parent to Ben, opening J-Lo into the family with open arms.
‘JLo has Jennifer Garner’s seal of approval,’ an insider exclusively revealed to US Weekly June 2021. ‘JLo thinks Jennifer is a kind and wonderful person and an amazing mother.’
While Lopez said of Garner as a mother in an interview with Vogue in 2022: ‘[She’s] an amazing co-parent, and they work really well together.’
Garner and Affleck’s split was amicable from the beginning, with the pair releasing a joint statement on how they still had ‘love and friendship for one another’ despite the relationship ending.
It read: ‘We go forward with love and friendship for one another and a commitment to co-parenting our children whose privacy we ask to be respected during this difficult time.’
Amidst the struggles surrounding his relationship with Lopez, Ben has reportedly been supporting his ex after the loss of her father in March 2024.
A source told Entertainment Tonight that Ben is ‘actively involved’ in helping Garner deal with her grief and is ‘checking in on her and making sure she knows he is there for her since her dad’s passing.
‘It was the kids’ grandfather and Ben and him always got along. He considered him family and always will.’
It’s clear the former couple are there for each other in times of need – and if the recent reports are to be believed things could be about to get more turbulent for the family.
Some sources say that Affleck has ‘come to his senses’ with a source telling Page Six that the couple are inevitably headed for divorce.
Other reports are more hopeful that while they are facing a rocky patch, Lopez’s dedication will ‘turn it around’.
‘If it is only a question of putting the work in then you had better believe that [Lopez] will turn it around,’ says one of Lopez’s LA-based friends.
‘She has thrown her heart and soul into her love story with Ben and will not give it up without a fight. From what I hear there is still a lot of love there, so there must be hope.’