Jennifer Lopez Shares Lesson Learned From Initial Ben Affleck Romance

Jennifer Lopez may sing “Let’s Get Loud,” but when it comes to her personal life and romance with Ben Affleck, she prefers to keep things quiet.

“You really just want to sing and dance and act,” she said while discussing the public’s perception of her world in an interview with The New York Times published Feb. 1. “This whole other thing comes along with it that you have to learn how to navigate—having that public life, this artistic life and then your private life. What you want is just a regular life, like anybody else. All of it is put under scrutiny.”

Lopez, 52, and Affleck, 49, rekindled their romance in 2021, about 17 years after the stars called off their engagement. And while they’ve been photographed during PDA-packed date nights, romantic getaways and movie premieres, Lopez told the newspaper they had “learned our lesson the first time” when it comes to dealing with the media frenzy.

Which is? “To hold it sacred,” she said about her and Affleck’s relationship. “You have to do what feels good to you all the time. But at the same time, you learn from the past, you do things better the second time. There’s a part of it that, yes, we’re together. But there’s a part of it that’s not, you know, being so open the way we were when we were so young and in love many years ago.”