Ben Affleck told J.Lo that he didn’t want ‘a relationship on social media’
Do you consider Jennifer Lopez to be someone who is extremely online? I do not. She’s online a normal amount for a celebrity of her age, I think – she has social media accounts where she posts some personal photos, but most of the time her socials are full of just work stuff, promotional stuff for all of her businesses and projects. She overshares, but she does that in interviews, documentaries and in her art, not really on the ‘gram. Well, when J.Lo and Ben Affleck got back together in 2021, he apparently requested that Jennifer not be extremely online with their romance.
When Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck rekindled their romance in 2021 after nearly two decades apart, the Air star had a request. Lopez has 253 million followers on Instagram — and Affleck didn’t want their relationship to play out in front of prying eyes, he says in her new Amazon Prime documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told.
“Getting back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,’” the actor and director, 51, recalls. “Then I sort of realized it’s not a fair thing to ask. It’s sort of like, you’re gonna marry a boat captain and you go, ‘Well, I don’t like the water.’”
Despite Affleck’s trepidations, the couple has made it work, getting engaged in April 2022 and tying the knot in Las Vegas that July. In the years since, Lopez, 54, has occasionally shared photos and videos of Affleck to her social media feeds, including a sweet video of them singing Sam Cooke’s “(What A) Wonderful World” in the car in honor of his birthday in August.
“We’re just two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise,” he says in the doc.
Lopez, too, speaks openly about the ways in which Affleck is uncomfortable in the spotlight, especially as the inspiration behind her new album This Is Me…Now and its accompanying visual film This Is Me…Now: A Love Story.
“I don’t think [Ben] is very comfortable with me doing all of this,” she says. “But he loves me, he knows I’m an artist, and he’s gonna support me in every way he can because he knows you can’t stop me from making the music I made… he doesn’t want to stop me. But that doesn’t mean he’s comfortable being the muse.”
The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which begins streaming on Tuesday, offers fans a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Lopez’s ambitious new project. The doc, directed by Jason Bergh, includes interviews with the star’s inner circle, as well as her producing partners and longtime collaborators. In the documentary, Lopez reveals that Affleck gave her a very special gift on their first Christmas as a reunited couple: a book that included every letter and email they’d ever exchanged over two decades, which he titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told.
Yeah, again – even before the Bennifer Revival, she wasn’t super online with her relationships? When she was with A-Rod, she would post some curated photos of their family life, but it was never anything which felt too egregious or TMI? Ben was worried about the wrong thing – Jennifer isn’t a chronic oversharer online, she’s a chronic oversharer in life. But I also think Ben has just softened in general too – he understands how Jennifer is, this is her nature, and hey, they’re both Leos so all of this is their natural habitat.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Jennifer’s Instagram/On The JLo.
