When poor Ben Affleck went on US television on Wednesday night to defend comments made on radio the day before about his marriage to ex-wife Jennifer Garner, it was apparent he just doesn’t get what he did wrong. I say ‘poor’ Affleck, as that was how he characterised himself on Jimmy Kimmel’s chat show.
Of his appearance on Tuesday on Howard Stern’s radio show, he said he had gone on and said “how much [he and Garner] cared about each other, cared about our kids, put them first. It said that I had blamed my ex-wife for my alcoholism, that I was trapped in this marriage, just made me out to be the worst, most insensitive, stupid, awful guy”.
“It hurts my feelings,” Affleck said.
Affleck’s feelings. With that, instead of making things better, the Oscar-winning actor made them worse.
It is worth remembering where Affleck is at in his personal life right now. His current partner is Jennifer Lopez, to whom he was engaged before they split up in 2004 and with whom he reunited last summer. Since then, it has been a glamorous affair of PDAs and red-carpet outings.
Affleck married to Jennifer Garner in 2005, a year after splitting with Lopez. They had three children, announced their separation in the summer of 2015 and divorced in 2018. He has spoken about his alcoholism and multiple stays in rehab, including one in 2018 when it was his ex, Garner, who drove him there. For that alone, she probably deserved better than what poured out of him on Howard Stern last week.
“I’d probably still be drinking,” Affleck told Stern of his former marriage. “It’s part of why I started drinking... because I was trapped.
“I was like, ‘I can’t leave ’cause of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ What I did was drink a bottle of Scotch and fall asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
You can see, to an extent, what Affleck was trying to do. He was trying to own up to his behaviour and addiction, but maybe if he’d dropped the word ‘trapped’ it would have been better. This casts Garner as the cause of his misery, whether he intended that or not, and as this long-suffering saint who kept the show on the road and the kids on track while he sought oblivion on the sofa. This is not to demean his addiction, but it is to say Affleck’s comments characterise Garner as the long-suffering spouse, a portrayal that has to smart even more now that Ben is all loved up again with Lopez.
If he thought he was trapped, imagine how Garner felt.
Ben Affleck jokes with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night
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Ben Affleck jokes with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night
Reports that Jennifer Lopez, his current partner, was put out by the Howard Stern appearance would suggest she has a greater grasp of things. Lopez, it was reported in the New York Post, was making a big effort to have a friendly relationship with Garner and Affleck’s three children. She felt stuck in the middle, it said.
Really, though, it’s Jennifer Garner who has the real beef with Ben Affleck and who is the one truly in the middle. In what seems to have been an ill-thought-out baring of his soul, Garner has become the miserable meat in his J-Lo sandwich. He was happy with Lopez, then he was unhappily married and mired in addiction with Garner, but now, luckily, he’s sober and sitting pretty with Lopez again.
Affleck has said publicly he’s grateful for second chances in both his professional and personal lives, but maybe he doesn’t get that he doesn’t have to trash his first chance with Garner in order to be happy in his second chance with Lopez.
In a 2016 Vanity Fair interview, in which she admitted a need to own her part in the end of the marriage with Affleck a year earlier, Garner also talked about the phoenix tattoo on Affleck’s back, which he’s said to have acquired around the time of their separation. “A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario?” Garner said. “I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”
On Jimmy Kimmel Live! last Wednesday, Affleck also said that after Howard Stern he was “thrilled”. He thought: “Wow, I should do more honest, exploratory, self-evaluating things.” Maybe he should, but maybe in private.
