Ben Affleck Didn't Want "A Relationship on Social Media"

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck at the premiere of "This Is Me...Now: A Love Story"

(Image credit: Getty Images)

We've known for a while that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez broke up the first time around because the media scrutiny around their relationship was too intense.

Because of this, it makes sense that Affleck might have been apprehensive about the issue of privacy when they first got back together circa 2021, as he explained in Lopez' new documentary, titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told.

"Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding," the This Is Me...Now singer said in the doc (via Entertainment Tonight). "And we had, like, a big wedding planned, like 14 ushers and bridesmaids and, three days before, we just crumbled under the pressure."

Affleck echoed his now-wife's words, saying, "When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was this massive amount of scrutiny around our private life."

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The Tender Bar actor continued, "Getting back together, I said, 'Listen, one of the things I don't want is a relationship on social media.' And then I sort of realized it's not a fair thing to ask—it's sort of, like, you know, you're gonna marry a boat captain and you go, 'Well, I don't like the water,' you know. We're just two people with kind of different approaches trying to learn to compromise."

They've successfully found a balance: While they confirmed their rekindled relationship via some steamy vacation pics in July 2021 and Lopez still occasionally posts photos and stories from their life together, the two also absolutely do not document every private family moment for the world to see.

As for Affleck, fans are pretty sure they found his secret Instagram account, which counts a whopping two followers. Now that's what I call healthy compromising!

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.