Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez are not talking about their current relationship, but they have already said plenty.
With reports have hit a rough patch in their almost two-year marriage, many are trying to read between the âBenniferâ lines about the couple reportedly putting their or Lopezâs recent decision to to be with her family.
But it appears that the pair have already given us all we need to know about their romance. Just watch âThe Greatest Love Story Never Told.â
The Prime Video documentary first released in February as a behind-the-scenes look at Lopezâs short film that accompanied her latest album, âThis Is MeâŚNow: A Love Story.â It was a lot of at once, some criticized too much, but the documentary, in retrospect, is revelatory.
Before they wed () in 2022, Lopez and Affleck were previously engaged two decades prior, only to call it off three days before their planned September 2003 wedding over pressures of living in the spotlight. âThe Greatest Love Story Never Toldâ explores what brought them back together, along with their bond and even their conflicts - in other words an adult relationship.
The title and its meaning
No one can say Ben Affleck isnât romantic.
He took their correspondence, every letter and email they had written over 20 years and put it in a memory book he titled, âThe Greatest Love Story Never Told.â He presented it to Lopez for their first Christmas together after they reunited.
Lopez used the letters as inspiration for âThis is MeâŚNow,â sharing it with her creative team.
âShe would pick one and she would let us touch them and read them,â one songwriter recounts in the documentary.
Affleck shares his reaction when he discovered the book had served as source material for his wifeâs work.
âShe was like âIâve been reading and the peopleâŚthis is the kind of inspiration. Iâve been showing them the book,â Affleck recalls in the film. âI was like âYouâve been showing all the musicians all those letters thatâŚâ and they were like âYeah, we call you Pen Affleck!â And I was like âOh my God.ââ
Though out of his comfort zone, the Oscar-winning producer and writer seems to understand.
âI did really find the beauty and the poetry and the irony in the fact that itâs the greatest love story never told,â he says. âIf youâre making a record about it, that seems kind of like telling it.â
Their different approaches to creativity and fame are what some observers believe may be the cause of possible conflict in their power-coupledom.
âThings that are private, I always felt are sacred and special because, in part, theyâre private,â Affleck says at one point in the film. âWeâre just two people with different kinds of approaches trying to learn to compromise.â
âGetting back together, I said, âListen, one of the things I donât want is a relationship on social media,ââ Affleck later says in the project. âThen I sort of realized itâs not a fair thing to ask. Itâs sort of like, youâre gonna marry a boat captain and you go, âWell, I donât like the water.ââ
Lopez expresses her appreciation for Affleckâs support.
âI donât think [Ben] is very comfortable with me doing all of this,â she says in the documentary. âBut he loves me, he knows Iâm an artist, and heâs gonna support me in every way he can because he knows you canât stop me from making the music I made⌠he doesnât want to stop me. But that doesnât mean heâs comfortable being the muse.â
All of the emotion
âThe Greatest Love Story Never Toldâ begins with Lopez explaining how her reunion with Affleck inspired her to do her first studio album in a decade.
She states that her love for him endured in their years apart, but she put to the side.
âWhen her and Ben first broke up it was catastrophic to her constitution,â said Dave Meyers, who both directed her music videos years ago and the âThis Is MeâŚNow: A Love Storyâ short film. âEverything that she wanted from what she understood love to be, for that to not work, For the pressures to break it apart. That just spun her out.â
Lopez recalls their initial split, noting that she felt she had lost her best friend and weeps as she talks about the love Affleck has shown her.
âWhat he saw in me, what he allowed me to believe about myself, only comes from love,â she says as tears roll down her face. âNobody else could make me see that about myself. Itâs very moving. Because I didnât think much of myself, and so the world didnât think much of me.â
In one scene, Lopez, worn down by the stress of the project she self-financed, expresses her fears sheâs falling short on set, in her marriage and as a mother. In another scene, Affleck is there to encourage her when she worries the visual representation of her new album is going to âsuck.â
âYouâll be scared itâll suck until it doesnât,â he reassures his wife and makes her laugh. âYouâve gotta discern between things that suck DNA-wise, and things that just donât work right.â
Thereâs also plenty of fun.
Affleck notes that Lopezâs character in her short film (which she insists is not completely based on her life) is 28 years old, which is not the age she was when they were first together.
âBut you were,â she says to Affleck. âYou were. Thatâs why you were not as smart as me.â
Affleck is now 51 and Lopez is 54.
When he teases her in the documentary about âwanting to play youngerâ even in her semi-autobiographical film, she lovingly calls him an âidiot.â
Lopez sums up how the couple found their way back to each other after so many years.
âWeâre totally different people now. And weâre the same,â she says. âAnd we have the same. One hundred percent.â
Enough for more chapters in a story that Affleck and Lopez still appear to be writing.