Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck's relationship hints can be noticed if you closely observe their actions.
There's been speculation about the relationship status of Hollywood couple J.Lo and Ben Affleck following media reports suggesting they've put their house on the market and Jennifer Lopez has cancelled her tour to spend time with family. However, a closer look at their past might offer some insights into their current situation.
Enter "The Greatest Love Story Never Told," a documentary originally released in February on Prime Video showcasing Jennifer Lopez's short film accompanying her latest album, "This Is Me...Now: A Love Story." While some found it a bit much, the film now seems remarkably prophetic.
Before they tied the knot twice in 2022, Lopez and Affleck had been engaged for the first time twenty years earlier, only to break it off just three days before their planned wedding in September 2003. This documentary provides a glimpse into the factors that prompted their reunion and the nature of their bond, encompassing both their love and disagreements - essentially, a depiction of a mature relationship.
The title and its meaning
Ben Affleck certainly knows his way around romance.
He compiled every letter and email exchanged between himself and Lopez over two decades into a memory book and titled it "The Greatest Love Story Never Told." He gave it to Lopez for their first Christmas together after they reconnected. Later, Lopez used these letters as inspiration for her album, "This Is Me...Now."
One of her songwriters recounts the moment an excerpt from the book was shared:
"She would pick one and she would let us touch them and read them."
Affleck's reaction upon learning his letters were used as inspiration for the album:
"She was like 'I've been reading and the people...this is the kind of inspiration. I've been showing them the book,' and they were like 'Yeah, we call you Pen Affleck!' And I was like 'Oh my God.'"
Despite his initial discomfort with the situation, the Academy Award winner seems to understand:
"I did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that it's the greatest love story never told. If you're making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it."
Their differing perspectives on creativity and fame could potentially be where friction in their relationship arises.
"Things that are private, I always felt are sacred and special because, in part, they're private," Affleck says at one point in the film. "We're just two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise."
"Getting back together, I said, 'Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media,'" Affleck later admits in the project. "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.'"
Lopez expresses gratitude for her husband's support as she navigates her career.
"I don't think [Ben] is very comfortable with me doing all of this," she says in the documentary. "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."
All the emotion
"The Greatest Love Story Never Told" starts with Lopez describing how reconnecting with Affleck motivated her to create her first studio album in a decade. She explains how her love for him had remained throughout their time apart but she had put it on the back burner.
Lopez's former music video director, Dave Meyers, describes the impact of their split on her:
"When her and Ben first broke up it was catastrophic to her constitution. Everything that she wanted from what she understood love to be, for that to not work, for the pressures to break it apart. That just spun her out."
Lopez reflects on their initial breakup, tears streaming down her face when she mentions Affleck's impact on her:
"What he saw in me, what he allowed me to believe about myself, only comes from love. Nobody else could make me see that about myself. It's very moving. Because I didn't think much of myself, and so the world didn't think much of me."
Lopez recalls fighting through exhaustion while working on the project she funded herself:
"My husband is here, thank God, but I'm not good enough. I'm so scared I'm not good enough on set, in my marriage, as a mother. If it means he leaves me and takes my kids, I'm not even gonna be here tomorrow."
In a light-hearted moment later in the documentary, Affleck is there to lift her spirits when she worries about the visual presentation of her album, quipping:
"You'll be scared it'll suck until it doesn't. You've gotta discern between things that suck DNA-wise, and things that just don't work right."
Affleck points out that Lopez's character in her brief film, which she doesn't claim is absolutely based on her life, is 28 years old, different from her age when they initially began dating.
"But you were," Lopeck tells Affleck. "You were. That's why you weren't as intelligent as me."
Affleck is currently 51, and Lopez is 54.
As he mocks her in the documentary about "wanting to seem younger" in her semi-autobiographical movie, she playfully dubs him an "idiot."
Lopez reveals how the couple reconnected after so many years.
"We're totally different individuals now. And we're the same," she says. "And we have the same. One hundred percent."
This proves there'll be even more tales in the narrative that Affleck and Lopez continue to create.
