For a reminder, Ben and J.Lo were first engaged in the early 2000s, but they didn’t make it down the aisle until many, many years later — but that’s a whole different story.
Ben and J.Lo called off their wedding in early 2004, and later that year, Ben began dating his Pearl Harbor co-star, Jennifer Garner.
Ben and Jen G got married in 2005, had three children, and stayed together for a decade. They announced their separation in 2015, but it wasn’t actually until 2018 that their divorce was finalized.
As the timeline indicates, Ben and Jennifer’s divorce was pretty complicated. Ben has talked very candidly in the past about how his struggles with alcohol misuse impacted his and Jennifer’s marriage and subsequent split, telling the New York Times in 2020 that their divorce was “the biggest regret of [his] life.”
Since then, the exes appear to have remained very close friends and solid co-parents to their three kids, who are aged 13, 17, and 20. Now, in a new interview with Marie Claire UK, Jennifer opened up about her divorce and how she and Ben came out stronger on the other side.
“You have to be smart about what you can and can’t handle, and I could not handle what was out there. But what was out there was not what was hard. The fact of it is what was hard,” she said. “The actual breaking up of a family is what was hard. Losing a true partnership and friendship is what was hard.”
Community became extra important for Jennifer around this time, telling the outlet: “That’s where your resilience is: it’s in your relationships and in the people who carry you through.”
Since Ben split from J.Lo in 2024, there’s been speculation that he and Jen Garner — who are often photographed together with their kids — might eventually get back together. However, that seems unlikely.
Jennifer has been quietly dating entrepreneur John Miller since 2018, and in her Marie Claire UK interview, the 53-year-old celebrated how she and Ben have been able to co-parent with “peace and equanimity,” describing it as “a partnership that I didn’t know I would ever get back to.”
“I think it’s important for women to know, when they think, ‘Oh, I’ll never see that, I’ll never have that feeling, I’ll never be friends with this person again,’ [that] time is the opportunity. Time is the opportunity to heal,” she said. “Time is the opportunity to forgive, to move on, and to find a new way to be friends.”
That’s the 2026 energy we want! You can read the full interview here.