The internet is going crazy over the reunion of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. Being an international movie star, Ben is no stranger to media attention, but he's concerned about how media attention is affecting his perception in his own family.
Ben Affleck was previously married to Jennifer Garner. The couple had three children, two daughters, and a son. The eldest one is Violet Anne Affleck who was born on december first, 2005. Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck was born four years after Violet, in 2009. Samuel Garner Affleck is their third and youngest child, born in 2012 who has already featured in the film “Argo” directed by Ben himself.
The stars have been outed by their kids multiple times as 'old-timers'. In a previous interview, Ben notes that his kids didn’t consider him as a “cool” dad. Whenever he talks about some song playing on the radio or an old TV program his kids start laughing and make fun of him.
Despite their failed marriage, Ben and Jennifer tried to make their marriage work multiple times until they decided to finally get a divorce. They didn’t want to set a wrong example of love, relationships, and families to their kids. They still talk highly of each other whenever asked.
Ben has never failed to mention that Jennifer is an amazing mother to their children. Affleck also posted a wish on mothers day thanking Garner for the three wonderful kids she brought into this world. Even though his youngest children have embarrassed him on countable occasions, Aflleck finds that being embarrassed by your young ones is healthy and all part of parenting. Besides this helps him learn the new “cool cultures” in society.
It's not family stories like these that Ben worries about though, it's the negative media attention his frailed relationships get, that affects him the most. Ben worries how these may be considered as mere gossip to the readers, they are based on the parents of children who get affected by these articles.
Affleck has not always had a good relationship with social media. Lopez and Affleck have confirmed numerous times how they were forced to call off their engagement in 2004 due to the excessive media and public being involved in their personal relationships and causing riffs between them.
To protect their friendship, they both remained in contact over the years through discreet emails only. They recently started dating again in mid-2021 but kept details off their social media platforms and the eyes of the paparazzi to protect all families involved. Recently, the two-time Golden Globe and Academy Award winner opened up about another mishap with the media.
He shared that he usually doesn’t care much about the public perception of him and has learned to ignore it. But as his children have started growing up and engaging in the world of social media, reading gossip articles about their parents, that's where it has grown difficult.
It is cruel to think that children regularly come across incidents of their father's failed love life expressed in memes and internet jokes. It's especially difficult to imagine that certain details about his life reach his children even before he tells it to them himself. Despite being a public figure, everyone deserves the right to have a private life.