Jennifer Lopez gets candid about after-effects of Ben Affleck divorce

Jennifer Lopez has opened up about the period of deep self-reflection that followed her divorce from Ben Affleck, revealing she made a deliberate decision to stop, cancel everything and examine her own role in what had gone wrong.

Speaking on the Smartless podcast on Monday, 15 June, Lopez, 56, described what happened after she filed for divorce from Affleck in August 2024, on the two-year anniversary of their Georgia wedding celebration, no less. 

"There comes a point where it's all so puzzling and wrong. Where you have to sit there. After my last divorce, I just sat there," she said. "I canceled my tour and I sat there, and I was like, 'You need to f***ing figure yourself out.'"

The soul-searching that followed led her to confront her own patterns rather than deflecting blame. 

"'What is going on with you?' Forget about everybody else. There's nobody to blame here except yourself in a certain way," she said. 

"Not that people don't behave in a way that's not great. But, 'What are you doing? What do you have going on?' That was a turning point for me."

One of the most striking moments in her reflection involved going back to the little girl she once was. 

"Looking at those patterns, I was able to go back to that little girl and really look at her," she said. 

"That little girl with the ripped nightgown, I can see her right now. … Dirty feet, walking around barefoot all the fing time. And just kind of going like, 'You did this. You did all of this. Give yourself a little fing something. A little love! Stop looking for love in other things and give it to yourself.'"

She also credited her sister Lynda Lopez with encouraging her to be her own keeper rather than focusing outward. The journey, Lopez said, has been gradual and cumulative. 

"These are all little puzzle pieces that you fit in little by little as you sit there with the oat milk and go, 'It's me.'"

Lopez and Affleck settled their divorce in February 2025. They had previously been together in the early 2000s and got engaged before splitting, before rekindling their relationship and marrying in 2022.