Why Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s Marriage Ended: Distance, His Mood Swings and Two ‘Very Different People’…
Insiders share what led Lopez to file for divorce in PEOPLE’s new cover story
Neither Jennifer Lopez nor Ben Affleck ever publicly addressed the mounting speculation about a rift in their marriage — chatter that began bubbling up in the spring.
But on Tuesday, Aug. 20, Lopez, 55, let her actions do all the talking. That day — the second anniversary of the wedding celebration she and Affleck, 52, threw at his 87-acre property just outside Savannah, Ga. — she quietly filed for divorce.
She also asked the court to change her legal last name from Affleck back to Lopez. The filing “speaks a ton,” notes a legal source.
Lopez cited “irreconcilable differences” in her divorce petition, and according to insiders, the glamorous pop powerhouse and the more reserved Oscar-winning actor-director indeed had trouble reconciling their opposite personalities—just as they did when they first split back in 2004.
“They are very different people,” says a source who knows both stars. “She’s super public and is more social, and he’s more of an introvert and is happy to hang out at home.”
Another source says Affleck was prone to “mood swings,” with “big highs and big lows. Who he said he was and who he turned out to be were two different people.”
It was a cloud that hung over the relationship, adds an Affleck source: “He doesn’t understand how his bad mood affects people around him.”
The source who knows both Affleck and Lopez also suggests the former couple, who wed just a year after they reunited, got caught up in the excitement of Bennifer 2.0.
“It happened quickly,” adds the source. “These were two people who were in love with love, and who wouldn’t jump into that? They really loved each other.”
Despite being the one to pull the trigger on the divorce, Lopez, says a fifth insider, “is heartbroken.”
But she’s also a realist, and knew by then the marriage was beyond saving. Lopez listed their date of separation as April 26, and the pair did indeed spend most of the past four months apart.
At the time of the official separation, she was in the New York City area filming an adaptation of the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman (which she co-produced with Affleck), fulfilling her duties as co-chair of the 2024 Met Gala, and rehearsing for her This Is Me…Live summer tour, which she canceled on May 31, “to be with her children, family and close friends,” her reps said in a statement.
Affleck was back in L.A. filming The Accountant 2 and staying in a rental house a few miles from the Beverly Hills mansion the couple bought in 2023 (and which they listed for sale for $68 million in July).
The two occasionally reunited in the late spring, mostly for events involving their blended family: Affleck shares children Violet, 18, Seraphina, 15, and Samuel, 12, with his ex-wife, actress Jennifer Garner, 52, and Lopez has 16-year-old twins Max and Emme with her ex-husband, singer Marc Anthony, 55.
And Lopez, says the source, was still hoping to navigate a path forward with her husband during that time.
“She tried really hard to make things work,” says the fifth insider. But Affleck — who bought a $20 million L.A. mansion in July when Lopez was staying on the East Coast at her house in the Hamptons — wasn’t as invested.
Two sources say he has been quietly spending time with actress Kick Kennedy, 36, the daughter of former U.S. presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy Jr., since June, though an Affleck insider calls romance speculation “garbage. There’s definitely nothing going on. I don’t think they even know each other.” (A rep for Affleck said Aug. 27 that there is “no truth to any of it.”)
Still, Affleck wasn’t giving his wife “any signs that he wants to continue their marriage,” says a Lopez insider. “It got to the point that she just needs to look out for herself.”
Marilyn Chinitz, a matrimonial lawyer at Blank Rome LLP, notes that Lopez filed her divorce petition pro se, meaning she didn’t use an attorney.
“I think that she most likely just wanted to get this done; there was a lot of hesitation and hemming and hawing back and forth, and it’s a statement: ‘I’m moving forward, I’m filing and I’m doing it on my own,’” says Chinitz, who does not represent Affleck or Lopez.
Now that Affleck and Lopez are officially over, those in the know don’t expect the aftermath to get ugly. “It’s civil,” says the earlier source who referenced Affleck’s highs and lows. “There’s lots of love and lots of respect there—and sadness.”
