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On June 30, 2015, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner announced, after much speculation, that they were getting a divorce. “We go forward with love and friendship for one another and a commitment to co-parenting our children whose privacy we ask to be respected during this time,” they said in a joint statement to People. The announcement came one day after their tenth wedding anniversary.
Fast-forward another decade, and suddenly, the tabloids are suggesting that Affleck and Garner could get back together. After photos of the co-parents smiling at each other at their son’s paintball birthday party surfaced online last week, sources are insisting that Affleck — fresh off a divorce from the other Jennifer in his life, J.Lo — is pursuing Garner again.
“They have been on good terms for a while now and seem to enjoy chatting and hanging out,” a source told People. Affleck has been “extra giddy lately” and “much more affectionate” with Garner, the source continued. TMZ got footage of Affleck pulling Garner in for a hug on the paintball field.
The exes have three children together and have stayed close over the years: Garner memorably drove Affleck to rehab in 2018 and reportedly invited him to spend the holidays together last year when his marriage to J.Lo imploded. But would she really take him back? She is, at the moment, dating the robotic burger-chain CEO John Miller. And the details of the Affleck-Garner divorce are pretty hairy. Let’s remember them together.
Marriage is work …
The tabloids first speculated that Affleck and Garner’s marriage was not on stable ground when Affleck won the Oscar for Argo in 2013 and thanked Garner in a, let’s say, somewhat unique way in his speech. “I want to thank you for working on our marriage for ten Christmases,” he said. “It’s good. It is work, but it’s the best kind of work. And there’s no one I’d rather work with.”
Huh. Garner seemed to echo Affleck’s sentiments about the state of their marriage the following year in a cover story for InStyle. “You can’t expect to be courted all the time, and I don’t want to court him right now — I don’t have the energy!” she said. “But we’re definitely in a very mindful place where we’re making an effort to be together, do things at the same time, and be loving.”
… Until it isn’t
By 2015, rumors of an impending divorce were everywhere, so when the couple finally announced their decision to separate, it did not come as a shock. Sources told E! News that Garner and Affleck had been in couples therapy for two years and that divorce was “not a decision they came to lightly.”
A nanny with Tom Brady’s Super Bowl rings
Just after they announced their split to the public, Garner and Affleck headed to the Bahamas with their kids to escape the media circus. But another tabloid scandal was percolating: Us Weekly reported that in the midst of the divorce, Affleck had taken up with … his kids’ nanny.
Her name, if you could ever forget it, was Christine Ouzounian, and she quickly became a paparazzi magnet, cruising around Hollywood in a new Lexus that Affleck was rumored to have bought her. (“Keep calm and meet my new drop top Lexi,” she captioned an Instagram photo of her ride.)
Affleck denied that he had an affair with Ouzounian, but the evidence was pretty damning: “Page Six” got a photo of the nanny riding in a private jet with Affleck and Tom Brady to a poker tournament in Vegas, just days before Affleck and Garner announced their separation. (She was grinning and wearing all of Brady’s Super Bowl rings in the pic.) And Us Weekly revealed that Affleck kept seeing Ouzounian all summer — she was photographed bringing a bottle of Champagne to his rental house. “She says Ben really, really likes her,” a “friend” told Us. “She’s saying this is true love.”
Garner, People reported, was “livid” about the whole thing.
Back tattoos and ashes
The final word on the breakup, however, came from Garner herself in a riveting cover story for Vanity Fair in 2016. The actress said that while “nannygate” did not cause her divorce, she didn’t appreciate it, either. “Let me just tell you something,” she said. “We had been separated for months before I ever heard about the nanny. She had nothing to do with our decision to divorce. She was not a part of the equation. Bad judgment? Yes.”
She also remarked on Affleck’s new, massive back tattoo of a phoenix. “You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart,’’’ she joked. “A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
But the most telling part of the interview is when she talked about Affleck being the love of her life. “I didn’t marry the big fat movie star; I married him,” she said. “And I would go back and remake that decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again. You can’t have these three babies and so much of what we had. He’s the love of my life. What am I going to do about that? He’s the most brilliant person in any room, the most charismatic, the most generous. He’s just a complicated guy. I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
I think she probably still knows all of that and is happy to keep Affleck in the friend zone for the rest of her life.
