I hope Mrs. Jennifer Lynn Affleck has a plan. I hope that there is some unseen force guiding her at this moment, and that all will be happily revealed in time. I hope that she knows something we don’t. Because otherwise she is tempting fate and her life may go to pieces before her first wedding anniversary.
If you haven’t been paying attention to J.Lo’s press tour over the last week, here’s what’s happening: She’s releasing a new album called This Is Me…Now, which is a callback to her 2002 album This Is Me…Then. Then was all about Ben Affleck, as it was released right before the two called off their engagement 20 years ago. Now is also going to be all about Affleck, because Lopez is now married to him.
The way Lopez has been promoting this venture is making me VERY NERVOUS. Ben and Jen have been married for less than a year, and neither has the best track record when it comes to committed relationships. (Before this marriage, Lopez was engaged five times and married three; Affleck was engaged twice, married once, and in and out of relationships with SNL producers, Playboy bunnies, and Gwyneth Paltrow.) But Lopez is insisting that this time, their love is real and will 100 percent last forever.
“I think what the message of the album is — if you have, like me at times, lost hope, almost given up, don't,” she said in an interview with Zane Lowe yesterday. “True love does exist and some things do last forever and that's real. I want to put that message out into the world and that does take a lot of vulnerability.”
Uhh yeah. She also revealed that her first breakup with Affleck made her want to die, and that this time around, Affleck engraved “Not. Going. Anywhere” inside her engagement ring to, uh, reassure her, I guess. “That's how he would sign his emails when we started talking again,” she told Lowe. “Like, ‘Don't worry, I’m not going anywhere.’”
Always a good sign when you have to spell that out.
But perhaps the wisdom that comes with time has given Lopez more confidence in her relationship. “I think now that we’re older, we realize, it’s much more clear…now we know,” she added. “Now, we know. And there is no question and there is no kind of like, ‘Well, let’s see how this goes.’ Like, ‘Nope, it’s me and you. That’s it. All the way, till the end. That’s it. It’s going to be us.’”
What does Affleck think about all this? Well. “I think parts of it scare Ben,” Lopez told Lowe. “He’s like, ‘Oh, do you really want to say all this stuff?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know how else to do it, baby.’”
I’ll just say again that I really hope she has a plan.
