In a week’s time, Jennifer Lopez broke up with Ben Affleck and got together with Marc Anthony.
The 45-year-old “On the Floor” singer details the timeline of her fast-moving love life in her new book, “True Love.” Her engagement to Affleck, then 31, ended three days before they were set to exchange vows in a fairytale wedding in September 2003.
“Ben and I split up at the moment when I thought we were committing to each other forever, it was my first real heartbreak, it felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest,” wrote Lopez, who, at the time, had already been married twice before.
Recognizing that others turn to drugs, alcohol or partying to heal their broken hearts, Lopez says she often seeks the comfort of another person. “My way of anesthetizing the pain was different,” she wrote. “I sought out comfort in another person, tried to find someone who could make me feel loved and wanted in my loneliest hour.”
Anthony, then 35, would walk into her life and “rescue” her days after she was supposed to marry Affleck. “Marc came back into my life three days after I should have been at the altar saying ‘I do’ to another man,” she added.
Lopez and Anthony first met in 1998. At the time, the Latin heartthrob predicted she would one day be his wife. The pair married in June 2004.
Lopez adds that her decision to marry Anthony might have been a quick fix.
“Thinking back, maybe deep down I knew that this was a Band-Aid on the cut, that my wound hadn’t been stitched or healed,” she reflected. “But I pushed all that to the back of my mind. Because life takes unpredictable twists and turns, right? And you’ve just got to go with what you feel is best in the moment.”
After seven years together, Lopez and Anthony announced their split on July 15, 2011.