Ben Affleck is seemingly living his best life with 52-year-old ex-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez right now, but he briefly revisited his past when appearing on SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show on Monday, December 13th. When the 49-year-old actor was reflecting on his marriage to 49-year-old actress Jennifer Garner, who he divorced back in 2018, he said some very harsh things about his ex and the mother of his three children, essentially blaming her for his drinking and suggesting he felt “trapped” in their marriage. Even though the Elektra star is reportedly happily engaged to her new beau John Miller, her ex’s words can’t have been easy to hear!
“We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking,” the actor, who went to rehab for alcoholism back in 2018, said when asked what his life might have been like if he and the 13 Going On 30 actress were still together. “Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
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The Argo director went on to say that he wanted to stay in the marriage for the sake of their three children – Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9 – and turned to alcohol for the "solution" to his problems. He continued: "I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was I drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution. Ultimately, we tried, we tried, we tried because we had kids, but both of us felt like we didn’t want this to be the model that our kids see of marriage."
The Gone Girl actor then went on to clarify that most of what the tabloids speculated about their marriage and divorce was false (although he used a much more colorful and NSFW word) and their divorce was, contrary to reports, actually quite amicable.
"Everything you read in the news about the divorce was *expletive.* The truth was we took our time, we made our decision … We grew apart,” he said. "We had a marriage that didn’t work. This happens. She’s somebody I love and respect, but to whom I shouldn’t be married any longer."
"We did it amicably. We did our best," he concluded. "Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry? Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect. I knew she was a good mom. I always hoped she knew I was a good dad. I knew I was." We're glad to hear that he redeemed himself at the end of the interview; but we wonder what Garner will have to say about his initial comments about his drinking…
