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Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are breaking up — again.
Exactly two years after their lavish Georgia wedding on Aug. 20, 2022, JLo has filed for divorce, TMZ reported today. The date of separation in the filing is April 26.
The couple, who famously dated in the early 00s and earned the portmanteau ”Bennifer” in the rabid tabloid coverage of the time, rekindled their romance in 2021, tying the knot twice, in Vegas in July 2022 and in Georgia in August that same year.
If you’ve been following the Bennifer renaissance, you’ll know the rekindled couple had recently gone from madly-in-love married to living apart and trying to unload their more than $60-million marital mansion.
Fans of the couple had been on ring watch for months, spotting both Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck in public with and without their wedding rings, confusing everyone—and likely themselves. But with this month’s development of Affleck purchasing a $20 million dollar home on his own, it seemed all over but the official announcement.
Signs of trouble had been building since spring. After more than a month without being seen together in public, the usually PDA-prone pair exchanged a very formal peck on the cheek when they were finally spotted at a family event together in May.
Then in June, Lopez announced that she was cancelling her “This Is Me … Live!” tour, planned for this summer. The reason? “Jennifer is taking time off to be with her children, family and close friends,” a representative said. Lopez added in a “special message to my JLovers” that she was “completely heartsick and devastated about letting you down. Please know that I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t feel that it was absolutely necessary.”
The reason the cancellation was necessary was a subject of debate, with some, like gossip blogger Perez Hilton, claiming that she struggled to sell tickets. Others, like the tabloid Page Six, claimed that this wasn’t the reason for the tour cancellation, quoting sources who said she was doing it for “personal reasons” — and those may have been the pending end of the second chance romance which she sang about on the album she was meant to be touring.
Earlier that month, Us Weekly quoted an insider who claimed that the couple were having “issues in their marriage.” The blame was laid at Lopez’s door: She was “completely focused on work,” leaving them on “completely different pages most of the time.”
Around this time, Lopez went to the Met Gala on her own, a development quickly followed by reports that they were living in different houses, with Affleck renting his own place near the home they bought together in Beverly Hills last year. The speculation was confirmed by People magazine — generally a solid source of celebrity information — which quoted a source confirming the rumours and adding that Lopez “seems OK.”
Re Affleck: According to a source cited then by Page Six, the actor and director had been so unhappy in the marriage that “if there was a way to divorce on grounds of temporary insanity, he would.” They went on to say that Affleck regarded the last two years as a “fever dream,” and that “he’s come to his senses now and understands there is just no way this is going to work.”
In a story that began as a celebration of second chances, it ultimately seems to have been a case of second time unlucky.