Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck “Have PTSD” After Their First Relationship

Over two decades after they first got together and broke up, Bennifer is back in full force, but they’re dealing with some residual effects from their first try. In a Dec. 21 interview with Variety, Jennifer Lopez said that she and husband Ben Affleck “have PTSD” from their first relationship, which began in 2002 and ended in early 2004.

J.Lo is gearing up to release her new album This Is Me... Now, which will be accompanied by a film that tells her and Affleck’s decades-long love story. Talking to Variety, she acknowledged that the film was a risk, saying “we both have PTSD” caused by media scrutiny on their first engagement, which ended with them calling off their planned wedding, and then the relationship entirely.

“But we’re older now. We’re wiser,” she emphasized. “We also know what’s really important in life, and it’s not so much what other people think. It’s about being true to who you are.”

Given their history, some of J.Lo’s team didn’t think it was a good idea to center her relationship in her next project, but she forged ahead. “As artists, we have to follow our heart and this is me following my heart and doing something that maybe everybody didn’t think was the best idea, but I had to do it,” she said.

Will Bennifer Work Together Again?

While This Is Me... Now is J.Lo’s project, a sequel to her 2003 album This Is Me... Then, which was written in part about her first relationship with Affleck, their love story this time around is actually told from both of their perspectives. Affleck helped co-write the film portion with his wife.

Speaking with Entertainment Tonight on Dec. 5, J.Lo said that she and Affleck “collaborate very well together” when it comes to work. “Nobody knows my story more than he does,” she said. “So we were able to kind of sit down and really dig into it, in a way that I don’t think any other writer could’ve done with me.”

This marks the first time that the couple has worked together since reconciling, but it may not be the last. In 2003, Bennifer co-starred in Gigli, which bombed both critically and at the box office and is widely regarded as one of the worst films of all time.

Despite the backlash, J.Lo publicly stated in 2022 that she’d be down to make a Gigli sequel, and even teased the possibility of appearing onscreen again with Affleck. “We talk,” she told Variety in 2022. “We love being together and working together so, yeah, you never know.”