Ben Affleck’s kids are side-eyeing their dad for trying to offer them dating advice.
The Oscar winner appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he recalled the “eyerolls” he gets at the dinner table. Affleck, 54, shares three children with his ex-wife Jennifer Garner: Violet, 20, Seraphina, 17, and Samuel, 14.
“I give advice or try to talk to them like a parent, as you do… but what I’ve found is that now it’s not only one teenager rolling their eyes,” Affleck told the host. “I’ll kind of launch into something at the dinner table and now I catch them giving each other looks. And I realize I’m the caricature in this story. I see them be like, ‘Dad is saying this and that…’”
The pushback intensifies when he tries to discuss romance in particular, he shared. “My kids were talking at dinner, and they’ll talk about their friends and the drama and their relationships—and I have some lived experience, I think, that’s worth sharing… some lessons,” he added.
Despite his insistence that he knows a thing or two, his kids aren’t hearing it: “I said, ‘You know, well, the thing about that relationship there with that person…’ The 17-year-old just turns to me and goes, ‘Oh, like you’re the expert on relationships.’”
Affleck married Garner in 2005, and their split was finalized in 2018. He reunited with his ex, Jennifer Lopez, after their 2002 engagement; they married in 2022 and divorced two years later.
Relationship history aside, the actor said he thought he would be successful as the “cool dad,” at least until he was disappointed. “I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t be the cool dad,” he said.
Still, he insists he will keep trying to give his kids his two cents: “These are the kinds of things we give to our children,” he quipped.
