‘Ben is selfish, sullen and a loud mouth. He was impossible to be married to.’ Insiders tell ALISON BOSHOFF the REAL reasons they believe JLo and Ben Affleck split up, the truth over the pre-nup and why it’s left her ‘humiliated’

The last time Jennifer Lopez saw Ben Affleck was last Thursday at his rental home, to wish him a happy 52nd birthday and spend some time with his children.

She is close to Violet, 18, Fin, 15, and Samuel, 12 – his teenagers with his first wife Jennifer Garner.

The day before, JLo had taken Samuel shopping to get him ready for the trip back to school, then dropped him off at Affleck’s house in Brentwood, LA.

Affleck’s daughter Violet, who just started at Yale University, was spotted the week before in one of her stepmother’s dresses. (I gather this wasn’t an errand, just the usual wardrobe raiding you’d expect from a teenager.)

Thursday’s festivities marked a final gathering of the blended family this summer — and undoubtedly an awkward one.

Because that was the last meeting before JLo finally decided to officially pull the plug on their marriage and file for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday of this week — the second anniversary of their big white wedding at his Georgia estate.

She won’t say why she pulled the plug on a case that, unusually, was filed without a lawyer. She has also asked her friends not to comment.

The heartbreaking truth, however, is that it appears Affleck didn’t want to repair the marriage, even though she had hoped to. Their separation — which had been going on since April — couldn’t last forever.

‘It was impossible to marry him,’ I was told. ‘Friends find him selfish, surly, impossible to please and negative most of the time. She was constantly trying to cheer him up, to cheer him up – it was exhausting. He is a loud man, likes to hear himself talk and is always bluffing. She was a great audience, usually hanging on his every word, but she is not as young and impressionable as she used to be.

‘The negativity eventually became so great that she could no longer lift him.’

People magazine quotes a source as saying, “She’s very disappointed and sad, but Ben hasn’t given her any sign that he wants to continue their marriage. It’s gotten to the point where she just has to fend for herself.”

After months of speculation and attention that she found “personally humiliating,” JLo felt she had no choice but to admit it was over.

The date of the divorce was given by her as April 26. The split came in early May, shortly after she walked the red carpet alone at the Met Gala. A source said at the time that Affleck would “file for divorce on the grounds of temporary insanity” if he could, because he was finally “coming to his senses” after what felt like a “fever dream” of a relationship with Lopez, to whom he was once engaged before ending things in 2004.

They began dismantling their married life over the summer. Their sprawling Beverly Hills mansion, bought for $60 million (£46 million), went on the market on July 12. A divorce became inevitable after he bought a new LA home in Pacific Palisades in the last week of July – coincidentally on her 55th birthday. He didn’t attend her huge Bridgerton-themed party, although his children spent time with her in the Hamptons during that period.

Now that schools are back in session and Violet is off to college, there’s no reason to make it official anymore.

What we can expect now is a bloodless and quick breakup. There will be no fights over money, friends say — they both have enough and they will both come out of the marriage with what they put into it.

“They’ll just call it quits and be glad it’s over,” says one. A financial information sheet filed as part of the divorce petition suggests they have no prenuptial agreement, which technically means they have to divide any income or community property earned during the union.

Since no dispute over money is expected, Lopez has decided to forgo spousal support and has asked the judge to deny Affleck this support as well.

In the near future, she has a number of public engagements. JLo is planning a trip to Canada for the Toronto Film Festival premiere of her new film Unstoppable, in which she plays the mother of a one-legged wrestler. The film is being produced by Affleck’s Artists Equity; he is not expected to attend. The hope is that afterward, they can both enjoy a period of relative peace and quiet.

The suggestion that they have somehow ‘fake’ their wedding for the paparazzi in recent weeks has prompted weary laughter from friends.

“They are adults, responsible adults and are trying to cope with the divorce as best they can, so that the consequences for the children are kept to a minimum,” says one of them.

I hear the kids are understanding and accepting of the situation. Although the couple was only together for two years, their five children (Lopez has 16-year-old twins with ex-husband Marc Anthony) developed relationships with their new stepparents and with each other, so this will be sad for them.

But most of all, it is desperately hurtful to Lopez. This was her fourth marriage, and it is “absolutely humiliating” that it was so short and so bad, I am told.

The end of Bennifer 2.0 is indeed a shocking turnaround for the actress and singer, who had “bet the farm” on rekindling their romance. It was only in February that she released an album, a film and a documentary about their love story, in which they rediscovered each other after their 20-year breakup.

You can’t entirely blame her for going so heavily into the romance, because it seemed like Affleck was into it just as much as she was.

The documentary The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which accompanied her film This Is Me… Now, was produced and financed by Affleck’s company. He was involved throughout the film, including editing, and sold the film to Amazon at a profit.

But there were signs of conflict. In the documentary, Affleck said, “When we got back together, I said, ‘Listen, one of the things I don’t want is a relationship on social media.’

“Then I realized it’s not fair to ask. It’s like marrying a captain and saying, ‘Well, I don’t want the water.’ We’re just two people with different approaches, trying to learn to compromise.”

Jennifer added: ‘I don’t think he likes me doing this, but he loves me and he knows I’m an artist… and he doesn’t want to hold me back.’ Sources deny that her lust for publicity was the cause of the marriage’s demise, pointing to ‘deeper issues’.

But another friend says, “What happened between their first engagement and this new marriage was social media and that has had a huge impact on her. JLo’s social presence is a steady stream of fans loving her, praising her and she can’t give that up. She loves him, but she also loves this fake world of fame and attention.”

There was drama, no doubt. There were some public spats — most notably Affleck looking gloomy and bored at the 2023 Grammys and JLo urging him to look “friendlier” and “more motivated.”

There was an apparent row caught on camera outside a St Barts jewellery store in January this year, with Affleck gesticulating angrily. A week later, she told reporters at the Golden Globes: ‘You don’t have to worry about Ben. I’ll tell you, he’s fine. He’s happy.’ By June this year, when she cancelled her tour to ‘spend time with her kids, family and close friends’, it was clear that this was no longer true.

The couple met when they starred together in the romantic comedy Gigli in 2001. The following year, they were seen kissing and she filed for divorce from dancer Cris Judd, her second husband, after just ten months of marriage.

Bennifer, as they were known, became engaged in November 2002, with Affleck giving her a huge pink diamond ring that reportedly cost $1.2 million (£920,000). They broke things off in 2003, just days before they were due to marry, and split for good the following year. Affleck apparently hated the attention that came with the romance.

There were reports that he was partying with dancers in 2003 and in January 2004 he and Matt Damon were seen with female fans they had met at a Berlin nightclub.

Affleck married actress Jennifer Garner, with whom he had already appeared in several films, in the summer of 2005, after having begun a romance the year before. JLo also married quickly – to singer Marc Anthony. Both had children with their new partners – twins Max and Emme for her; Violet, Fin and Samuel for him.

Affleck, whose father was an alcoholic, claimed he quit drinking in 1998, but three years later he checked into rehab for alcohol abuse.

He and Garner divorced in 2015 after she grew tired of his gambling and drinking. In 2018, Garner checked him into rehab after showing up at his home with a Bible and a lawyer.

There are concerns that he struggled with sobriety during his two-year relationship with JLo. At the December 2022 premiere of the film Shotgun Wedding, she was filmed asking him what was in his glass, then taking a sip to make sure it wasn’t booze. Reps for Affleck did not respond to questions about the matter.

By the way, JLo hardly drinks alcohol, although she does have her own liquor company, Delola, which she founded before her romance with Affleck.

And while there is no evidence of any current womanizer, he has a reputation as a libertine. There was an alleged affair with his children’s nanny, which he denied, and in 2017 he was accused of groping a woman on set in 2003. He later apologized, saying, “I behaved inappropriately.”

In 2021, Jennifer ended her relationship with baseball star Alex Rodriguez after a rocky two-year engagement — he was linked to another woman — and Affleck, also single, began the process of wooing her again. They tied the knot in Las Vegas, then had a second lavish wedding at his Georgia estate.

Lopez was sure this would be different from their first failed affair.

“We’re older now, smarter, more experienced, in a different phase of our lives, with children, and we have to be very aware of that,” she said.

“It’s a beautiful outcome that this has happened in this way, at this time in our lives where we can really appreciate, celebrate and respect each other.”

Sadly, after only two short years of marriage, there wasn’t much left to celebrate.