Ben Affleck said he felt “trapped” in his marriage to Jennifer Garner and believes that if he had stayed in the marriage, he would not have gotten sober.
“We probably would’ve ended up at each other’s throats. I probably still would’ve been drinking,” Ben, 49, recently revealed on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show,” adding that “Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
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Ben Affleck, who went to rehab for alcoholism in 2018, also said, “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.”
The actor went on to say that he and his former wife Garner, who were married from 2005 to 2018, tried to work on their marriage for the sake of their three children, Violet, 16, Seraphina, 12, and Samuel, 9 years old.
“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,” Ben also said while on the show.
The actor made it clear that the tabloids had it wrong about their breakup, “Everything you read [in the news about the divorce] was bulls–t. The truth was we took our time, we made our decision … We grew apart. 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.”
According to Ben while on the show, his marriage to Jennifer Garner ended on good terms.
“We did it amicably. We did our best. 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…
“The cure for addiction is suffering, you suffer enough, that something inside you goes, ‘I’m done,’” he said of getting clean. “I’m lucky because I hit that point before I lost the things that were most important. Not my career or money — it was my relationship with my kids, and when I felt as if it impacted them, I recognized it,” he said.
Ben added that “It was the worst day of my life. I made amends … But since that day, I swear to Christ, I have not ever wanted to drink once.”
The “Argo” star admitted that his public divorce from Jennifer Garner gave him pause when it came to rekindling his aughts-era romance with superstar Jennifer Lopez who he currently dates.
“It crossed my mind for sure … My responsibility to my children is the highest responsibility I have, so I’m not going to do anything that’s painful or destructive to them if I can help it. That being said, I know that my life affects them.
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“Me and their mom are celebrities and that’s hard. Let’s not bulls–t each other, right? That’s a f–king cross to bear, that’s an albatross already … and then during the divorce, you know they printed horrible lies,” he said.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who were engaged in the early 2000s before their breakup, rekindled their relationship in April 2021 and have remained in love since then.
