Jennifer Lopez Ben Affleck
Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck (Photo by James Devaney/WireImage)

This month Jennifer Lopez announced the 2023 arrival of her new album This Is Me.. Now. The exciting new release will serve as a follow up to her 2002 album This Is Me… Then released during her initial two-year relationship with Ben Affleck. Specially iconic was a track titled “Dear Ben”.

Speaking with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Lopez has since reflected on that time of her career. “That album, This Is Me… Then, really captured a time where I fell in love with the love of my life. And I just, it’s all right there on the record,” she told the outlet. “Every single song we wrote, me writing ‘Dear Ben,’ it was such a special moment in time to have captured.”

Following their shock split in 2004 Lopez revealed that it was “too painful” to perform the record. “It was so painful after we broke up,” she recalled. “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 “On The Floor” star went on to release albums in 2005, 2007, 2011 and 2014, but admitted to Lowe that she didn’t write music in the same way as her 2002 release, until now.

“It set me on a spiral for the next 18 years where I just couldn’t get it right,” Lopez added “But now, 20 years later, it does have a happy ending. It has the most, would never happen in Hollywood ending.”

After reuniting in 2021 the couple eloped and married in Las Vegas in July of this year before embarking on a lavish three-day wedding party at the actor’s Georgia estate. According to the pop star she is now legally known as ‘Jennifer Affleck’.

PARIS, FRANCE – JULY 23: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are seen leaving Hôtel de Crillon on July 23, 2022 in Paris, France. (Photo by Pierre Suu/GC Images)

On a final note, Lopez said that she wishes that fans who have “lost hope” in finding love will be inspired to keep moving forward. “True love does exist and some things do last forever. And that’s real. I want to put that message out to the world,” she continued. “That does take a lot of vulnerability, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

Watch the full interview, below.