In her new memoir 'True Love', J.Lo details the ending of her engagement to Ben three days before they were set to exchange vows in September 2003.
- Nov 7, 2014
AceShowbiz - Jennifer Lopez gives details of her past relationship with Ben Affleck in her new memoir "True Love". She writes, "When Ben and I split up at the moment when I thought we were committing to each other forever, it was my first real heartbreak, it felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest."
J.Lo, who started dating Ben in 2002 after they met on the set of "Gigli", confesses that she hated being dubbed by the name Bennifer. "Being a couple that was on every tabloid cover for two years straight, hounded by the paparazzi and constantly judged," she says, "Our relationship crumbled under the pressures of the media scrutiny that surrounded us."
J.Lo and Ben, who got engaged in November 2002, ended their engagement three days before they were set to exchange vows in September 2003. "(We) called off our wedding, ending our very public relationship in suitably dramatic fashion just days before we were to walk down the aisle of a fairy-tale wedding we had planned for months," she recalls.
Following the break-up, J.Lo reveals she was haunted by the spotlight. "It was just the cover of a magazine or a headline to everyone else - today's joke, tomorrow's trash," she claims, "When the realization that I wasn't going to have the fairy tale family I wanted really set in, well, that was when I really started to fall apart."
While others may turn to drugs, alcohol or partying to deal with a break-up, the "Maid in Manhattan" actress never did those. "My way of anesthetizing the pain was different," she shares, "I sought out comfort in another person, tried to find someone who could make me feel loved and wanted in my loneliest hour."
J.Lo began dating longtime friend Marc Anthony in January 2004. "Marc came back into my life three days after I should have been at the altar saying 'I do' to another man," she says, "Thinking back, maybe deep down I knew that this was a Band-Aid on the cut, that my wound hadn't been stitched or healed."
She adds, "But I pushed all that to the back of my mind. Because life takes unpredictable twists and turns, right? And you've just got to go with what you feel is best in the moment."
J.Lo got married to Marc in June 2004. They later split in 2011 after seven years of marriage. Their divorce was finalized back in June.
