The Long, Slow and Very Public End of the Bennifer Marriage Was a Bummer to Watch

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | August 21, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | August 21, 2024 |

It finally happened. After months of speculation, endless news coverage and vaguely conspiratorial theorizing, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are divorcing. The pair married only two years ago, having reunited almost 20 years from their first split. This moment felt wearily inevitable, the agreed-upon endpoint to an extremely public dissolution. Celebrities break up with one another all the time. It’s expected far more frequently than an old-school happy ever after. Yet there was something especially sad about this break-up. The press watched on for months for this announcement, practically baiting the pair for it. A lot of otherwise reputable publications seemed like they set up Bennifer Divorce Watch the moment they got back together. Social media treated it like a countdown to Christmas. Every paparazzi photograph was dissected for details like the Zapruder film. And now, I can’t help but think about how this entire thing is just a complete and utter bummer. Some gossip is fun to talk about, exciting to discuss. This made me sad.

Sue me, I was rooting for them. It was a great story, the ultimate second chance romance for two megastars with publicly messy love lives who reunited after two decades and seemed finally ready to be together. They were older, (presumably) wiser, hotter than ever, and eager to let the world see it. Lopez was cast in two films produced under the banner of Affleck’s new production company. She made a lavish concept movie and album, funded out of her own pocket, to declare her love to the masses. In interviews, they both heaped praised on one another’s talents and aspirations. This was the power couple we’d wanted twenty years ago, and they seemed prepped for the journey. Or, at least, we hoped they were ready.

It’s easy to forget just how overexposed Bennifer was the first time around, and how pissed off it made people. Ben was seen as the all-American hottie who had the talent to back it up and was ready to be a bona fide movie-star. Jen was the singer with her own impressive acting career and an impeccable ability to attract attention (remember The Dress?) When they got together after making Gigli, their every move was documented, all while people complained that they were sick of the sight of them. Lopez bore the brunt of the harshest comments. Yes, Affleck faced some mockery, like with his hilariously smarmy L’Oreal ads, but the misogyny and racism directed towards Lopez was obvious. She was seen as the fiery Latina woman with a coterie of exes to her name and the omnipresent idea that she somehow didn’t deserve her fame. The reinforced narrative was that of an ambitious woman latching onto a gormless dude and sucking him dry, which was reinforced by the one-two flops of Gigli and Jersey Girl.

Yet one could argue that Lopez fared better after the split than Affleck. She moved on quickly, released some good albums, married Marc Antony, and re-established her power couple clout with barely a lost breath. Affleck’s leading man career floundered until he moved into strong supporting roles and becoming an acclaimed director. Neither of them stopped being tabloid targets with their new partners, but it certainly felt like Affleck and Jennifer Garner received harsher attention over the years. After their divorce, Affleck’s mid-life crisis era, complete with that back tattoo and his time in rehab, led to his comeback, and an eagerness from the public to embrace Affleck in his more mature, penitent era. And then JLo returned to his life. It seemed so fitting.

I wrote before about how Lopez’s 2023 and 2024 has been treated as her flop era. Her love letter album and truly bananas film underperformed. She cancelled her tour, which had been struggling to sell seats for months beforehand. Her Netflix movie Atlas came and went without much fanfare. The internet had a ball mocking Lopez, often for reasons that seemed frivolous or misguided (although a lot of old stories about her diva behaviour and treatment of service workers resurfaced and certainly didn’t help matters.) The end of her marriage was sold as part of the flop era, a sign that she was failing on all fronts. It was a detail that made the leering speculation over their split all the queasier to me.

Marriages end all the time. Everyone knows someone who has been through a divorce, acrimonious or otherwise. It’s a painful experience that, if you’re lucky, you get to do behind closed doors, but a lot of it is forced to be public. You have to announce it, to deal with the comments, to go through a legal rigmarole that can be costly, tedious, and traumatic. If there are children involved, things get even more tangled. You’re subjected to everyone’s unwanted opinions, and even the people who love you the most will be judgmental jerks and speculate about your innermost experiences. Now imagine that all happening while the world watches and treats it like a sports game. Imagine every agonizing detail of the end of your marriage being the stuff of clickbait, the paparazzi photos of your children used as evidence of your personal failings. Imagine having people gloat that your marriage deserves to end because you’re in your flop era.

Maybe it was wishful thinking to root for a glowing dream, but the flipside of gleeful leering over the protracted end of a relationship has been pretty miserable. It’s not over either. Reports suggest that there was no prenup, and the pair still have work to promote together in the future, so the speculation will only get more intense. Celebrity gossip is easier to consume when the high-low stakes of rich people problems feel very distanced from our own issues. It’s harder to take as mere entertainment when you can relate to it, when you’ve been there and felt that. It’s not just the end of a fun fairy tale. It’s another reminder that the ‘everything is content’ ethos comes with a body count.