Ben Affleck opens up about his past relationship, fatherhood, and his new budding romance with past flame Jennifer Lopez.
Ben Affleck appeared on The Howard Stern show and candidly discussed the most private issues of his life.
The Render Bar actor talked about his divorce from actress Jennifer Garner and the lifelong impact it had with his children with the actress, Violet, Serafina, and Samuel.
Affleck stated that marriage and divorce were “part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped.”
Ben stated that his divorce with Jennifer Garner was long on the cards but they tried to stay together and one unit for the sake of their three children.
“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,” he explained, adding that they eventually realized they didn’t want their relationship to “be the model that our kids see of marriage.”
He also confessed that the divorce was not as dramatic as it was portrayed in the media. It was a slow gradual process.
“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. Did we have moments of tension? Did we have disagreements over custody? Was stuff difficult for us? Did we get angry?” he continued. “Yes, but fundamentally it was always underpinned with a respect.”
Ben said that the addiction was something he had to fight along with making sure the kids handle the divorce calmly. “The cure for addiction is suffering, you suffer enough that something inside you goes, ‘I’m done,” he said of the decision. “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.”
Now that the actor has come out of addiction and is sober and has also come out of the after-effects of a divorce he says that “he might not be cured but he has not wanted to drink once.”
