"It was a part of me then that I had to put away to kind of move on and survive. It was a survival tactic for sure," Lopez said.
Jennifer Lopez got candid about the pain she felt after breaking up her more than 20-year engagement with Ben Affleck. The multi-hyphenate discussed the 20th anniversary of her ground-breaking third studio album, This Is Me...Then in a new interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music. Then, which chronicled her long-lasting and closely watched romance with Affleck, with whom she eventually parted ways in 2004. According to HarpersBazaar, This Is Me... Now, Lopez's next album celebrates her relationship with the Oscar-winning actor by focusing on their 20-year reunion and marriage. "I didn't even realize it was kind of prophetic in a way."
"That album, This Is Me... Then, really captured a time when I fell in love with the love of my life. And I just, it's all right there on the record," Lopez told Zane Lowe. "Every single song we wrote, me writing 'Dear Ben,' it was such a special moment in time to have captured." But after the sad separation, she found it difficult to perform those songs. Because it was so painful for her to play these songs after their breakup, Jlo refused to do so. "Once we called off that wedding 20 years ago, it was the biggest heartbreak of my life, and I honestly felt like I was going to die." The singer said that the trauma from her heartbreak sent her down a spiral for the next 18 years where she couldn't get it right.
But now, 20 years later, Jlo and Affleck do have a happy ending. "It has the most, would-never-happen-in-Hollywood ending." She claimed that Affleck even questioned her decision to not perform the songs from This Is Me...Then songs after they had resumed their romance. "It was a part of me then that I had to put away to kind of move on and survive. It was a survival tactic for sure." Lopez said, the pair first split up because of pressure from the public and media over their relationship. "It destroyed us. That was part of what destroyed us, was the outside energy that was coming at us," she said. "We loved each other. It was hard."
After their breakup they both went their separate ways and pursued other relationships. "it motivated both of us to then become and do the things that we wound up doing, which is kind of go into hyper gear. He went into hyper gear, and I went into hyper gear, but not together; we had to do it separately", she said. After the pair got married in Las Vegas in July, there was a flow of inspiring ideas and new music. Lopez said to Lowe that she is most inspired when she is in love, which is why she went back into the recording studio to finish her most recent album after reuniting with Affleck again. "When he came back into my life, again the same thing happened where I felt so inspired and so overtaken with emotion that it was just pouring out of me."
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d8fq0OFxOo&t=11s
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Kevin Winter / Staff
