You know that feeling when you’re starting to sober up at a house party? The one where you look around at what you thought, just a few minutes ago, was a glam, fun hangout and, suddenly, it dawns on you… You’re actually in a dingy kitchen listening to two men discuss the best at-home coffee grinders?
Well, I think, collectively, we’re all experiencing a similar sensation right now. Except about Bennifer 2.0.
Because J Lo and Ben Affleck are over, right? It certainly seems that way at least. The Noughties power couple who rekindled their romance in the pandemic have reportedly sold their multimillion-dollar house and are apparently at breaking point, “close friends” have told the tabloids.
Now that the dust is settling, it all feels a bit like waking up from a weird fever dream, doesn’t it? I mean, a few years ago, I’d have bet my, I don’t know, air fryer, on the fact that this pair would stay together forever. Affleck massaging Lopez’s bum on a yacht (for the second time!) was all the evidence I needed that happily ever afters were real. It would appear, however, that we all got a little ahead of ourselves. Maybe a glamorous multi-hyphenate, celebrated for her drive, perfume line and painstakingly maintained bod, was never going to find her perfect match in a scruffy actor, best known in some circles for looking a bit sad when he smokes. (And I don’t mean that as a diss, it’s actually my type.) Maybe the whole way their relationship played out was… A little wild?
In case you aren’t totally clear on the story, let me clue you in. The pair first met on the set of a very bad film, Gigli, in 2001. By the time the movie had come out, they’d had a whirlwind romance absolutely chock full of PDA. Lopez wrote a love song called “Dear Ben”, in which she declared: “You’re perfect / I just can’t control myself.” (I feel the same about restaurant bread baskets.) Affleck took out full-page adverts in trade mags to toast Lopez when she won awards. They got engaged within a year – Affleck sealing the deal with an extremely Y2K pink diamond. Then they were hounded by the paparazzi to the point that they cancelled their wedding, broke up and married other people (which doesn’t sound at all traumatic).
And that was that, until 2021, when – both newly single and, let’s be honest, probably bored in lockdown 3.0 – sparks began to fly between our lovebirds again. Maybe some fire emojis were DMed. Perhaps a “stay safe” was commented. Could a “you up?” have been texted? (Who didn’t shoot a few bold shots in the pandemic?) Whatever the case, the pair were drawn together. They went public in July, did their first red carpet in September, and had been married twice by the end of 2022 (because having just one wedding is for bores). And, all the while, they engaged in the kind of high-level corny behaviour most people are only shameless enough to partake in during the infatuation stage, those blissful weeks at the beginning of a relationship when you’re so pheremoned up you can’t see any of your new partner’s flaws.
We saw Jen joining in with Ben’s hobbies (struggling to carry iced coffee) and Ben supporting Jen’s passions (making a semi-fictional movie inspired by their love story starring Keke Palmer and Kim Petras). They declared their obsession for each other in interviews. There was their very public loved-up honeymoon in Paris, the matchy-matchy fits… I wouldn’t have been surprised if either of them started posting snaps captioned “this one x” on their socials, such were the vibes. Then it turned out that Affleck had kept every picture, email and letter the two had shared since 2001 – all of which he presented to Lopez as a gift. The world was hooked. Sure, it all came across as very intense, but we lapped it up, gorging on the silly romance of it all.
I do wonder why it was that so many of us were so transfixed by this relationship. Normally, when celebrities are PDA-heavy, they are rightfully shamed for it, just like all people should be (I’m British, in case you hadn’t guessed), but with these two, things were different. Was it because it was super nostalgic seeing the duo out together again? Was it that it played into a narrative we’ve all bought into, about celebrities’ lives being ruined by the paparazzi – scratching the same itch as Anne Hathaway and fake Harry Styles getting savaged by Buzzfeed (lol) but still coming out on top, in very high-quality movie The Idea of You? Maybe.
One of my friends reckons that, as a culture, we all got “caught in dicksand”. I’d take things one step further (and I do have to stress here that I’m basing this on pretty much no factual information). You know the plot of nearly every rom-com? When the lead gives up chasing the hot asshole with the flashy job and realises that the person she should be with is really her best friend or her first love or the one that got away? (It was the plot of When Harry Met Sally, 13 Going On 30, even the bloody Lizzie McGuire Movie.) I think that over the years, this idea – that our true romantic partner is not a sexy new person, it’s actually a safe person from our past – has seeped into some of our brain jelly (a scientific term).
I call this the “it-was-them-all-along” theory, and it hits when you’re at your weakest: after you’ve had a couple of failed relationships or you’re sick of dating apps or you’re in the middle of a global pandemic and you’re worried there’s a possibility that the whole of the human race might be wiped out. You look back on past flings and old friendships with rose-tinted glasses, ignoring the (usually very good) reasons why things didn’t work out in the past.
This is my theory for why Bennifer 2.0 happened – and I also think it’s why we were all such suckers for their love story too.
I mean, who doesn’t hope that their life might, at some point, have some rom-com flourish? I don’t know a person who’d happily believe that they might never get another shot at a lost love or fumbled crush. And when you’re single, it’s nice to feel like there might be a potential future for you in actually touching distance – rather than 1,600 swipes, 45 bad dates and three crushing situationships away. It makes total sense to me that, as they got back together, we’d look at Ben and Jen and ignore all evidence contrary to the idea that this was their tied-up-with-a-pretty-bow ending or that their credits were about to roll and all that would come next would be some kooky outtakes and a 7/10 Rita Ora song. Because if it could happen for them, it could happen for us.
Of course, it appears not to have happened for them, which is a shame. But at least it gave us all an opportunity to rewatch Affleck’s cameo in “Jenny From the Block”.