By all accounts, it has been a grueling year for Jennifer Lopez.
She dropped a multi-million dollar multimedia project about her relationship with actor Ben Affleck, only to see the movie-slash-album tank and the marriage careen suddenly onto the rocks. Under intense scrutiny from the tabloids, she canceled her summer concert tour in order to focus on her personal life, but wound up filing for divorce in August, precisely two years after the couple’s massive celebrity ceremony in 2022. On Instagram, Lopez appeared to be live-laugh-loving her way through the tabloid shitstorm.
But in real life, she tells Interview magazine, the whole thing nearly did her in.
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Speaking with comedian Nikki Glaser, Lopez gestured toward the turbulence. Asked if she has any regrets about the “pain [she] just went through,” Lopez replied with an emphatic no, but added: “That doesn’t mean it didn’t almost take me out for good. It almost did.”
“But now, on the other side of it,” she continued, “I think to myself, ‘F—, that is exactly what I needed. Thank you, god. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m sorry that you had to do this to me so many times. I should have learned it two or three times ago. I get it. You had to hit me really hard over the head with a fucking sledgehammer. You dropped the house on me. Don’t have to do it again.’”
For what it’s worth, it was her second shot with Affleck and her fourth divorce, which may have been what she was alluding to with the counting.
Elsewhere in the interview, Lopez explains that she is doing “the work,” trying hard to exercise introspection in the wake of the break-up and seeking to understand her role in the implosion. Apparently she also intends to stay single for the time being, assuring Glaser she’s “not looking for anybody” new. She did not, however, have anything to share about the recent and reportedly PDA-heavy brunch with Ben, though.
