The couple called it quits three days before their planned 2003 wedding.
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck called off their 2003 wedding just three days before they were set to exchange vows. In Lopez's new documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, the singer and her now-husband recount how things went wrong days before their planned nuptials.
"Ben and I, we broke up three days before our wedding," Lopez tells a group of people. "We had a big wedding planned -- 14 ushers and bridesmaids, and three days before we just crumbled under the pressure."
Affleck agrees, telling the cameras, "When Jen and I broke up before, the catalyst for that was the massive amount of scrutiny around our private life."
The doc follows the making of Lopez's musical experience, This Is Me... Now, which was directed by Dave Meyers. In The Greatest Love Story Never Told, Meyers, who directed Lopez's "I'm Real" music video in 2001, recalls, "When her and Ben first broke up, it was catastrophic to her constitution, everything that she wanted from what she understood love to be. For that to not work, for the pressures to break it apart, it just spun her out."
"For all those years it was really hard, because I didn't just feel like I lost the love of my life, I felt like I lost the best friend that I ever had," Lopez agrees. "And I couldn't talk for so many years, and that was the hardest part."
In an onscreen conversation between Affleck and Lopez, the actor points out that, in the script of her musical experience, their split is the inciting incident that led to pain in her life.
"I think for us to move on from that, we have to forgive it, forgive each other. Do you forgive me?" he asks. She responds with just a smile. Later, Lopez expands on those feelings, telling Affleck, "That heartbreak set both of us on a course to figuring ourselves out and to being better people."
"Do you think you've forgiven me all the way?" he asks again.
"Yeah, I think I've forgiven you all the way," she responds. "I think I need to forgive myself some things."
The pair ended up rekindling their romance in 2021. Through their love story, which is depicted through song in This Is Me... Now, Lopez hopes that people will "believe that love exists."
"I feel like I came out the other side. I've made it through. I've made something good of my life. I'm proud of that," Lopez tells the cameras. "But one of the parts of that was admitting to myself you're not perfect, you're not completely whole. And you know what? Something that's worn and older and broken like a nice leather jacket or an old pair of boots is really beautiful. And kind of embracing the beauty of the scars that we pick up along the way."
The Greatest Love Story Never Told will begin streaming on Prime Video Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. ET.
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