Why did Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony divorce? JLo wanted him to 'put up a fight' for their family
When Jennifer Lopez tied the knot with Marco Antonio Muñiz, better known by his stage name Marc Anthony, her fans were hopeful that the actress had finally found her true love. The couple had an initial interaction in 1998, but things did not get serious until 2004 when Lopez split up with Ben Affleck.
The 51-year-old has recently created a lot of stir on social media after she spent several days with Affleck. A source told PEOPLE, “[Jennifer] spent several days with Ben out of town. They have a strong connection. It's all been quick and intense, but Jennifer is happy.” The former couple was often referred to as Bennifer. They got engaged in 2002 but did not walk down the aisle and called their relationship off in January 2004. The same year, Lopez married Anthony. Initially, their union had been “passionate” as “explosive,” described by ‘The Boy Next Door’ star, but she also admitted that Anthony was a rebound after her break up with Affleck.
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In her book, ‘True Love’, she wrote: “Marc came back into my life three days after I should have been at the altar saying ‘I do’ to another man. 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. But I pushed all that to the back of my mind.” Lopez, however, reportedly convinced herself that her marriage with the ‘Live my life’ singer would work in the long term. “When I married Marc, having already been through the disappointment of two divorces and a broken engagement, I wanted so much for our marriage to be ‘it’,” Lopez added.
But despite all the efforts, the union was not working and the pair realized that in their seventh year of marriage. At the time, Lopez was flying high in her professional life, but her personal life was shattering. “In the midst of all this excitement and outpouring of appreciation and love, the bubble was burst with three simple words: ‘I’m not happy.’ Marc was in the middle of venting to me about things between us that had been bothering him, and I was sitting there trying to figure out where he was going with it,” the ‘Second Act’ actress said once.
She had also told Anthony at one point, “This is not working. You know it's not working. We're not living like a family, and I don't see how things are going to change. Neither of us is happy, and the kids are wondering what is going on. I think we should move on with our lives,” after realizing she did not love herself during their marriage. But she also added, “Deep down, I still wanted him to put up a fight for our family. But instead, he said, ‘Okay.’”
And in July 2011, Lopez and Anthony announced their separation. In a statement to BBC, they said, “This was a very difficult decision. We have come to an amicable conclusion.” A year later, the 52-year-old musician then filed a divorce petition in 2012, mentioning irreconcilable differences. After their divorce, Lopez reportedly struggled hard to find “forgiveness”. “When my marriage ended, it was not easy to find forgiveness. It wasn’t the dream that I had hoped for, and it would have been easier to fan the flames of resentment, disappointment and anger. But Marc is the father of my children, and that’s never going away,” she had explained.
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