Here's How J.Lo & Ben Coped While They Were Broken Up

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck fell in love (again!) with each other, 20 years after their first engagement. Part of what makes their ultra-romantic love story so sweet is how they found their way back to each other after so much time apart — but that doesn’t mean being broken up was easy for them. During a Nov. 28 interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music, J.Lo explained how she and Affleck coped during the years they spent apart.

“Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life. I honestly felt like I was going to die. It sent me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn't get it right. But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending,” she explained. Plus, per Lopez, part of her and Affleck’s individual success can be credited to their breakup. "I think, in the weirdest way, that it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing, which is going into hyper-gear. He went into hyper-gear and I went into hyper-gear. But not together,” she explained.

According to Lopez, their resumés full of accomplishments might be partially due to splitting up. “We had to do it separately,” she said. “He went on to start directing, win his Oscar, do his second Oscar, do his thing where people had written him off in a way. The same thing with me. It was just like people were like, ‘Her music career's over. She's this, she's that.’ You know what I mean? I wasn't getting movies. I had to power my way back. I had to work and work.”

She continued, “I got divorced and I was like, ‘OK, I'll do the reality show. I'll do the television show. I'll do the single. I'll do this.’ And it was just, ‘OK, I'm going to go on tour for the first time.’ All these things with two babies. It fueled us in a weird way that we felt we had to prove ourselves again.”

Apparently, their time apart also helped them get back together. She explained, “Now, we know. And there is no questions and there is no kind of like, ‘Well, let's see how this goes.’ Like, ‘Nope, it's me and you. That's it. All the way, till the end. That's it. It's going to be us.’”

Lopez continued, “We're not [wasting any more time], we know... We had to live these separate paths, and we did other beautiful things, and we had these amazing children. But when we came back together and the universe and God and, as it would have it... Once we got whole enough and complete enough and loved ourselves enough and could stand on our own two feet really completely, as the universe would have it, we were brought into each other's lives again.”

❤️