With one divorce down and another in progress, Ben Affleck is soon to find himself officially single again. This development begs the question: has Affleck learned his lesson in love? Besides his ex-wife Jennifer Garner and his soon-to-be ex-wife Jennifer Lopez, Affleck has had five other public relationships that just didn’t stick. With seven failed relationships under his belt, there’s likely a pattern to blame for this many breakups.
Out of his seven relationships, his divorce with Lopez can be attributed to irreconcilable differences. Three of the seven break-ups — including his separation from Jennifer Garner — were due to alcohol addiction, while another relationship with Ana de Armas didn’t pan out because they were at “different points in their lives.” His time with his first love, Cheyenne Rothman, appears to be the outlier as she was the one responsible for ending the relationship.
Though alcohol addiction was a prominent contributing factor in several of his breakups, Affleck has also been shown to have commitment issues in the past. Take Gwyneth Paltrow, for example, who had a three-year on-again off-again relationship with Affleck before things ended for good in 2000.
In an interview with Howard Stern, Paltrow explained that “he was not in a good place in his life to have a girlfriend.”
Flash forward to his most recent split with Lopez, and while he seems to have gotten his alcohol addiction under control, the same cannot be said for his commitment issues. One source revealed to the Daily Mail that Affleck didn’t put much effort into working through their problems.
“He hasn’t shown any commitment and interest in making their marriage work,” the source said. “It’s gotten to the point where she needs to look out for herself.”
This behavior tracks with how Affleck described himself in his 1999 interview with Playboy which has resurfaced after his falling out with Lopez.
“I think what happens is, I end up wanting to be out of the relationship, if you get dissatisfied and unhappy and don’t say something, if you don’t deal with right then, it just festers and stays there,” Affleck said. “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.”
At the end of his speech, Affleck hopes that this behavior “is something I’m growing out of.” But, as we all know, actions speak louder than words and as of 2024, Affleck has made it clear that he might just be stuck in 1999.
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