Here's How J.Lo & Ben Reconnected After 20 Years

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s romance is one for the books — or the movie screens. After calling off their engagement in 2004, both J.Lo and Affleck moved on with their lives, getting married to other people and having children. So the fact that they ended up together, nearly 20 years later, feels a bit like a fairytale. But, um, how exactly did Lopez and Affleck get back together? She explained it all to Vogue.

Apparently, Affleck slid into J.Lo’s... emails in early 2021. After a magazine requested a quote from him about his ex, he let her know that he had nothing but good things to say. The two stayed in touch and began seeing each other on the DL before romance rumors started popping up in the spring of 2021. “Obviously we weren’t trying to go out in public,” Lopez told Vogue on Nov. 8. “But I never shied away from the fact that for me, I always felt like there was a real love there, a true love there. People in my life know that he was a very, very special person in my life. When we reconnected, those feelings for me were still very real.”

Just because it worked out for Bennifer doesn’t mean J.Lo suggests the same route for everyone. Getting back together with your ex can be messy, after all. “I don’t know that I recommend this for everybody,” she told the outlet. “Sometimes you outgrow each other, or you just grow differently. The two of us, we lost each other and found each other. Not to discredit anything in between that happened, because all those things were real too. All we’ve ever wanted was to kind of come to a place of peace in our lives where we really felt that type of love that you feel when you’re very young and wonder if you can have that again. Does it exist? Is it real? All those questions that I think everyone has.” I guess only an email can answer those questions?

Though they grew in their time apart, Affleck affirmed that Lopez is still the same in a lot of ways. “There is something innately, magically kind and good and full of love at the heart of who Jennifer is,” he told Vogue. “That’s exactly the person I remember from 20 years ago. Maybe she sees all the changes she’s made, whereas when I see her, mostly I just see someone who has retained, against the odds, the thing about her that always made her the most incredible to me: a heart that seems boundless with love. She is my idea of the kind of person I want to be.”

During the interview, Lopez also touched on her decision to legally change her last name to Affleck. “People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez. But my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we’re joined together. We’re husband and wife. I’m proud of that. I don’t think that’s a problem.” She defended her choice, saying, “I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that’s okay, too. But if you want to know how I feel about it, I just feel like it’s romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and maybe I’m just that kind of girl.”

Well, here’s to Mr. and Mrs. Affleck.