Jennifer Lopez told herself ‘you need to f‑‑‑ing figure yourself out’ after Ben Affleck divorce

Key Points

Jennifer Lopez is reflecting on the healing process she went through after she and Ben Affleck divorced.
“After my last divorce, I just sat there, and I was like, I canceled my tour, I sat there and I was just like, ‘You need to f‑‑‑ing figure yourself out,'” the Office Romance star said.
Office Romance is now streaming on Netflix.

Jennifer Lopez is still healing. And that’s okay.

While discussing her past two years of healing following her divorce from Ben Affleck, the Office Romance actress reflected on how she’s changed. Lopez called the past five years “a tumult,” while the past two years have been “a healing process from that tumult.”

“I really got to know myself, and the person I am today is so different than the person I was even two years ago,” she told Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on their podcast SmartLess. Lopez said that the healing process allowed her to appreciate her life and what she created for herself.

“Do you recognize that that can be a real accomplishment for somebody in your position?” Bateman asked Lopez.

Jennifer Lopez at the ‘Office Romance’ premiere in London in June 2026
Credit: Karwai Tang/WireImage

“There’s been different times where I felt like — whether people outside knew it or not — my life blew up in my own face,” Lopez said.

“It was because of the choices I made but also because of the fact that I had things that needed to change about myself that I didn’t understand or recognize that was attracting certain things and attracting a certain type of experience into my life,” she added.

Lopez continued, “After my last divorce, I just sat there, and I was like, I canceled my tour, I sat there and I was just like, ‘You need to f‑‑‑ing figure yourself out. What is going on with you? Forget about everybody else. There’s nobody to blame here except yourself in a certain way.'”

She concluded, “Not that people don’t behave in a way that’s not great, but what are you doing? What do you have going on? That was a turning point for me. And that was a couple of years ago now.”

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Lopez and Affleck have a history together. The former couple met on the set of the film Gigli and began dating in 2001 and got engaged in 2002. Affleck famously made a cameo in the 2003 music video for Lopez’s “Jenny From the Block.” They never made it down the aisle at the time, announcing their spilt in 2004 due to overwhelming media attention.