People have had many questions about the rekindled romance of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck since the duo reconnected back at the end of April, just a few days after Lopez and ex-fiancé, Alex Rodriguez, officially announced their split. One of those questions, of course, is why the relationship would work out this time, when their initial whirlwind romance only lasted a couple of years. Well, Lopez’s former PR guru thinks that their union is now set to stand the test of time, and that has everything to do with Affleck’s honesty about his “demons.”
Rob Shuter was a member of Jennifer Lopez’s PR team between 2003 and 2005, and is even the one who crafted the brief statement that let the world know the supercouple called Bennifer were done back in January 2004. Now, Shuter says he believes that Lopez and Ben Affleck are destined for a much longer lasting love, and told the Daily Mail:
Ben was the one that got away. When they broke up his demons were a secret. Since then, he has been very honest about his struggles and has confronted them. They had the right love at the wrong time. Now is the right time.
I suppose Shuter has a point. During Lopez and Affleck’s original romance, which started because they met on the set of Gigli in early 2002, and ended about two years later, Affleck was far from open about his alcoholism. While he’d completed his first month-long stint in rehab back in 2001, he didn’t open up about that time until 2012. Even though one would hope that he was sharing his troubles with Lopez while they were dating / engaged, it’s possible that the stress of trying to keep his problems under wraps to the public added an extra strain to his life, and the romance, as a result.
Since then, though, Affleck has been much more open about his struggles, going to rehab twice more, in 2017 and 2018, and speaking about those instances after each stay. When Affleck had a public relapse during a party in October 2019, after a little over a year of sobriety, he also spoke up about that incident, commenting on it the very next day. So, it is possible that his willingness to confront his problems and open up about them has contributed to the two of them being a better fit for each other now.
Lopez and Affleck spent a week together in Montana in May, fully setting off public notice of Bennifer 2.0, a little more than 17 years after they went public with their long-ago breakup. Hopefully, whether what Rob Shuter says is correct or not, they’ve truly been able to mend whatever was broken during the first leg of their romance, and will be able to serve us genuinely happy and glorious couple moments for many years to come.