Jennifer Lopez believes she and Ben Affleck are ready to go the distance.
Lopez graced the cover of the latest issue of Rolling Stone, where she opened up about how her and Affleck being at different points in their lives has changed their dynamic since getting back together last year — 17 years after they called off their engagement in 2004.
The singer-actress, who is promoting her new movie “Marry Me,” is thankful for her second chance with Affleck and is more guarded now when it comes to how much she wants to share about their relationship.
“I won’t talk about it a lot. We’ve both grown. We’re the same, and we’re different. And that’s what’s nice,” she told the outlet in the interview, which took place in December 2021. “Yeah … having a second chance at real love … yeah. As I said, we learned a lot. We know what’s real, what’s not real. So it’s just — the game has changed. Again, I’m trying not to say too much.”
Although Lopez doesn’t want to share too many details about her relationship with the “Justice League” actor, she said she doesn’t see them ever breaking up again after rekindling their romance in April last year.
“I don’t think we would have got back together if we thought that was where it was headed,” Lopez told the magazine. “We feel like what we found again is so much more important, and how we protect that and how we live our lives — what to share, what not to share — is the balance that we have now, the benefit of experience and the wisdom that we gained over the years.”
During the interview, Lopez also talked about constantly feeling like an “underdog” in the entertainment industry since she didn’t grow up wealthy or had connections and was treated badly when she and Affleck first got together.
She recounted “South Park” calling her a “mean-spirited b–ch” in an episode that poked fun at her Latin heritage and Conan O’Brien saying that, as stand-ins for the couple in a sketch, he’d cast “our script intern” as Affleck and “our cleaning lady” as Lopez.
The “On the Floor” singer described that time as “brutal.”
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Though it was “one of the happiest times” of her life as she and Affleck were “so in love,” Lopez said the criticism and media scrutiny “really destroyed our relationship from the inside out, because we were just too young to understand at that time what were really the most important things in life.”
Lopez shared similar comments in her recent cover story interview with People.
According to the performer, she and Affleck had been “naive” when they first started dating, and when they put their relationship “out there,” it “got a little trampled.” However, she is more confident in their love this time around.
“We’re older now, we’re smarter, we have more experience, we’re at different places in our lives, we have kids now, and we have to be very conscious of those things. We’re so protective because it is such a beautiful time for all of us,” Lopez told the outlet.
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Lopez and Affleck were most recently photographed Thursday while they were on their way out of the singer’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” taping in New York City to promote her new romantic comedy.
The couple was bundled up while stepping out, and the actor carried several bags in his arms as they walked together.