We shouldn’t judge J-Lo just for being a hopeless romantic

Olivia Petter, The Independent

And just like that, another love story for the ages has been destroyed. It’s safe to say that regardless of how engaged you may or may not be in popular culture, we all had high hopes for J-Lo and Ben Affleck — sorry, J-Lo and Ben Affleck 2.0, or Bennifer, as fans like to call them.

After all, this was a couple who defied everyone’s expectations by reuniting in 2021, almost 20 years after they first got together while filming early Noughties flop, Gigli.

Theirs was a romance that signalled hope for millions, serving as proof that true love not only exists, but that it also withstands time, space, and various children and divorces. If you’re meant to be together, you will overcome any and all hurdles, no matter how long it takes. Fate will find you... and whatever other clichés you subscribe to. Or at least used to subscribe to.

Because this week, it was revealed that Lopez had filed for divorce from Affleck after just under two years of marriage. When rumours of their reconciliation first surfaced in 2021, the internet went into a spin unlike any other. The couple courted this, recreating famous photos of one another hugging on a yacht, before tying the knot in a lavish ceremony to outdo all lavish ceremonies, which took place on Affleck’s 87-acre compound near Savannah, Georgia.

There were gushing social media posts, and an even more gushing newsletter penned by Lopez: “When he saw me appear at the top of the stairs that moment it both made absolute sense while seeming still impossibly hard to believe, like the best dream, where all you want is never to awaken.”

Hence why the split has come as a shock to us all. But it has also prompted the inevitable sexist noise that typically follows any female celebrity over the age of 40 who is not perennially happily married with children. Noise that questions their judgement, and weaponises their personal lives — and unconventional romantic trajectory — against them.

This noise feels particularly loud around Lopez, who you will know by now has been divorced four times. You will know this because the internet incessantly reminds you; her relationship history has been plastered all over social media in the days since the divorce was announced.

The narrative is that poor J-Lo can have it all — except for love. She has married so many times and still can’t seem to make it work. What a failure of a woman she must be — and so on. It’s adjacent to the kind of insipid chatter that seems to consistently pervade any conversations surrounding Jennifer Aniston, who, like Lopez, has also had the audacity to live life on her own terms.

Yes, Lopez has been married four times. That doesn’t make her a failure, nor does it warrant the kind of judgement and scrutiny she seems to constantly be subjected to. Her only crime? She’s a hopeless romantic, which is a particular affliction I understand more than most, because I’m one too.

After announcing her wedding to Affleck, she said in a statement: “Love is beautiful. Love is kind. And it turns out love is patient. Twenty years patient.” It was a beautiful sentiment, one that I don’t think is any less true now than it was then. Lopez believed in the relationship, just as I’m sure she believed in all her previous relationships.

Isn’t that what we do, us hopeless romantics? Dive into love headfirst, taking a risk and hoping for the best outcome? If it lasts, that’s quite something. If it crashes and burns, it clearly wasn’t meant to be — but at least we know we tried.

There’s something romantic in the pursuit. Maybe that’s what keeps us hoping. I know it does for me — and I hope it does for J-Lo too.