By Page Six | Created at 2025-03-15 11:06:53 | Updated at 2025-03-15 17:40:05
6 hours ago
Will she or won’t she?
That’s the burning question about Jennifer Garner since her increasingly chummy ex-husband Ben Affleck was seen embracing her during a paintball outing earlier this month.
Rumors circulated that Affleck wanted her back, and Garner could be considering rekindling their romance.
The official word being peddled by some close to both Garner, 52, and Affleck’s more recent ex-wife, Jennifer Lopez, 55, is that everything’s fine. Garner is going strong with boyfriend John Miller and doesn’t want to get back with her ex romantically — and Lopez is totally cool with Garner and Affleck’s super-warm… friendship.
Others tell The Post it’s more complicated, with a lot of variables in play.
“She’s actually devastated,” a source who used to work for Jennifer Lopez and has stayed in touch with people around her told The Post. “She’s keeping it together publicly but she’s told everyone around her not to trash Ben. She doesn’t want to get down in the dirt with him.”
But another source who knows all parties well vehemently denied reports Lopez was still upset over the divorce, saying she’s “having a blast” this month filming her new Netflix rom-com, “Office Romance” co-starring Brett Goldstein, in New Jersey.
“I’d say they’re both relieved to be done with him,” the source told The Post last week. “Ben’s an emotional roller coaster. He’s even been reaching out to Jennifer [Lopez] again recently. The two Jennifers are actually friends. They bonded over co-parenting their kids. I don’t know why the press feels they have to pit women against each other.”
The source said there is zero chance either Garner or Lopez, who are both middle children with an older and younger sister each, would reconcile with Affleck and that they have learned their lesson with him.
“Who wants the guy?” the source said. “You think he’s the prize? No way. It’s like, ‘Next!’”
The source said Lopez may have been devastated last year when she and Affleck broke up – but has since gotten her mojo back.
She filed for divorce on their wedding anniversary last year and it was finalized in February 2025.
“Of course it’s sad when someone reveals to you who they really are,” the source said. “She may have been devastated last year but she’s risen above it. She puts her kids, and then his kids, first. She’s not just some woman scorned or betrayed. Like I said, he’s put out feelers to her recently.”
Garner’s off-and-on boyfriend since 2018, burger impresario John Miller, 47, seems to be still very much in the picture, insiders said.
Though he was photographed recently with his own ex, stunning violinist Caroline Campbell, 45 – with whom he shares two children – she is happily married to competitive distance runner Christopher Estwanik and lives much of the year in Bermuda.
Affleck, whose affair with his children’s nanny led to his divorce from Garner in 2018, has relied on her strength and stability in the rocky years since. They have included her driving him back to rehab for his ongoing recovery from alcohol addiction — as well as the splashy-but-doomed reconciliation with Lopez, his fiancé from the early aughts.
Just as Affleck ran to Garner not long after splitting with Lopez three days before their planned 2003 wedding, history seems to be repeating itself.
It’s a saga that now spans 25 years.
Affleck first met Garner on the set of 2000’s “Pearl Harbor.” She was married to actor Scott Foley at the time. A year later Affleck signed on to “Gigli” with Lopez and the two fell in love. They got engaged in late 2002 but it lasted less than a year.
At the time they blamed overwhelming “press scrutiny,” but a source who worked with Lopez told The Post it was definitely Affleck who ended things, leaving Lopez heartbroken.
She married singer Marc Anthony on the rebound in June 2004 and the two went on to have twins, Emme and Max, now 16.
“Thinking back, maybe deep down I knew that this was a Band-Aid on the cut, that my wound hadn’t been stitched or healed,” Lopez wrote later about that marriage, which ended in divorce in 2014.
Affleck bounced back with Garner, whom he had reunited with professionally in 2003 for “Daredevil.”
“He’s your basic tall, dark and handsome. He’s it,” Garner told PEOPLE of her costar at the time. “I can’t imagine anyone in the world I would rather see swoop in and save the day like Ben.”
Affleck and Garner married in June 2005, announcing at the same time they were expecting a baby.
They divorced in 2015, after reports surfaced of Affleck’s affair with their children’s nanny, Christine Ouzounian.
Still, Garner has famously stood by Affleck, even in the throes of their divorce.
““He’s the love of my life,” she told Vanity Fair in 2015, one year after their split. “What am I going to do about that? … I always say, ‘When his sun shines on you, you feel it.’ But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it’s cold. He can cast quite a shadow.”
Affleck later shined his light hard on Lopez again and they got engaged a second time in April 2022 and eloped to Las Vegas three months later, followed by an elaborate wedding at Affleck’s estate in Savannah, Georgia in August.
Affleck had the words “Not Going Anywhere” inscribed on Lopez’s 8.5-carat radiant-cut green diamond engagement ring.
“We did it,” Lopez said at the time. Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient.”
In February 2024, Lopez released an album and two films dedicated to her renewed love story with Affleck against the advice of some of her closest friends.
They were right, as the album flopped and the films were mocked.
Two months later Affleck moved out of the $68 million Beverly Hills mansion they had bought.
He moved into a new home 10 miles from Lopez – but right around the corner from Garner’s $8 million farmhouse-style estate in Brentwood where she’s been raising their three kids.
The former couple share Violet, 19, a student at Yale University, Fin, 16, and Samuel, 15.
He closed escrow on the $20 million home on July 24, 2024 — the day Lopez celebrated her 55th birthday, without him, in the Hamptons.
Since then, he and Garner have publicly played happy families, while Lopez has been portrayed as the high-maintenance diva who drove him away.
But those who know them both – but won’t go on record for fear of retribution from Oscar-winner Affleck, who still wields much power and influence in Hollywood – say the opposite is true.
“The dirty secret is that he’s the diva. He’s the one who likes attention and calls the paps and manipulates women,” an insider told The Post. “He love-bombs you and once he’s got you, he gets bored and leaves. It’s cruel.”
Other sources interviewed by The Post say they think both Garner and Lopez – as well as Hollywood – are starting to have his number.
“I hope she doesn’t let Ben come back to her romantically, he is such a triangulator,” one Garner fan wrote online.
One former Lopez confidante is not so sure. They fear she will never really be over him.
“I hate to say it,” they said. “But I can see J. Lo taking him back a third time
