Jennifer Lopez is opening up about the most important reboot of 2021: the return of Bennifer.
Lopez chatted with People about her rekindled romance with Ben Affleck, whom she dated in the early 2000s and reconnected with last year.
"I feel so lucky and happy and proud to be with him," Lopez said. "It's a beautiful love story that we got a second chance."
Lopez and Affleck dated from 2002 through 2004, when they called off their engagement. In March 2021, Lopez announced she and Alex Rodriguez called off their engagement, and the tabloids erupted into a frenzy after it was revealed that she and Affleck were together again later that year. The two have spoken rarely about the relationship since then, with Affleck telling The Wall Street Journal he didn't want to "share everything with the world."
But Lopez told People she feels "very happy and lucky to be in a relationship that's happy and loving, and I want to do everything I can to protect that and keep it safe." She reflected they "had a little bit of fear" after rekindling the relationship considering last time, "we were naïve and it got a little trampled." Now, she says "we don't want any of that to come into play again," and she gushed about Affleck as being "everything I always knew he was and wanted to be."
Lopez also addressed the relationship in an interview with The New York Times, explaining they "learned our lesson the first time" and now plan on not being "so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago." The interview was at one point interrupted by Affleck, who, in what the Times described as a "peculiar moment," entered and pulled Lopez into another room.
"They returned 10 minutes later," the Times writes, "only to embrace, kiss and whisper 'I love you' into each other's ears."