Prior to his marriages to and divorces from both Jennifer Garner and Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck once admitted he suffers severely bad luck when it comes to relationships.
In a 1999 interview which has resurfaced this week following his and JLo’s most recent split, the Gone Girl actor even went as far as to admit he’s ‘p*****d off’ several of his former flames, and claimed many of his previous relationships were doomed from the get-go.
Ben Affleck opened up on his relationships in 1999 (Ke.Mazur/WireImage)
Way before ‘Jen squared’, now 52-year-old Ben endured several high-profile romances, including with fellow actor Gwyneth Paltrow and television producer Lindsay Shookus.
It was around this time that Ben gave an interview with Playboy Magazine, where he lifted the lid on his difficulty in getting romances to stick.
When asked by the publication if he’d ended any former relationships on bad terms, he immediately confirmed so.
“If I were the next guy to go out with them, I’m sure I would be nodding in agreement about what an a**hole their ex-boyfriend was,” he confessed.
Ben then added: “It’s not like I was a womanizer or physically abusive or psychologically abusive or whatever. It’s just that these relationships never end well.”
The actor dated Gwyneth Paltrow for several years (Ke.Mazur/WireImage)
In the early noughties – following this interview – he was romantically linked to JLo for the first time, after the duo met on the set of Gigli and sparks started flying. The singer later divorce her then-husband Cris Judd.
In the years that followed, ‘Bennifer’ went on to make their relationship official, and even got engaged in 2002, setting a date for their wedding the following June.
Tragically, however, the duo were unable to make their relationship work in the long-term, and they parted ways that same year.
Ben then went on to wed actor Jennifer Garner, with the couple welcoming three children of their own.
Sadly, though, they divorced in 2017, and Ben was later linked to the likes of ‘Bond girl’ Ana de Armas.
That was, until he and JLo rekindled their romance, and tied the knot in 2022.
Ben was previously married to Jennifer Garner (SGranitz/WireImage)
However, and the ‘Jenny From The Block’ chart-topper filed for divorce in August 2024, with the date of their separation listed as 26 April.
Reflecting on his break-ups at the time, Ben also told Playboy in 1999: “During the course of a relationship, if you get dissatisfied and unhappy and don’t say something, if you don’t deal with it right then, it just festers and stays there.
“So instead of saying, ‘Look, don’t do that, please don’t act this way,’ I go along with it until I just don’t want to be in the relationship at all.”
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JLo divorced Ben last month (Christopher Polk/Golden Globes 2024/Golden Globes 2024 via Getty Images)
He added of his own tendencies: “Then I create some incident or do something or just don’t call. And then she’s p***ed.
“And I can’t necessarily blame her at that point since I’ve developed such a passive-aggressive rage that I have no sympathy and tell her, ‘Well, of course I didn’t call you. If you weren’t such a nagging, shrewish harpy I’d call you.’
“But that hopefully is something I’m growing out of.”
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