On June 29, 2005, Jennifer Garner married the man who would become her fourth child.
And what a problem kid Ben Affleck has turned out to be.
Despite splitting in 2015 and divorcing three years later, Garner, 52, has nursed her ex-husband through his never-ending personal tumult: addiction, rehab, relapses and a string of failed romantic relationships, including one with the family nanny.
It’s the Ben show, and Garner is always on clean-up duty.
Before taking the admitted addict to rehab in 2018, the “Draft Day” actress was photographed driving her estranged and very sweaty ex through a Jack In The Box drive through to get him some grub.
Affleck, looking like a helpless kid in a carpool, sat in the backseat of Garner’s vehicle waiting to be fed by mama bird — a strikingly poignant image of dysfunction.
While he was in rehab, Garner even worked behind the scenes to save “The Way Back,” the basketball movie he was supposed to be making at the time.
“His ex-wife Jennifer Garner called me up, and told me that when he went to rehab, he took a basketball with him,” director Gavin O’Connor said in 2020.
“She said, ‘Gavin, he’s asking you, please don’t pull the plug on the movie, he really wants to do this.’”
She’s his personal first responder, there to provide triage and unconditional maternal love, regardless of the personal embarrassment he puts her through. Like that time he claimed being married to Garner set off his boozing.
“Part of why I started drinking was because I was trapped,” he told Howard Stern in 2021. “I was like, ‘I can’t leave because of my kids, but I’m not happy, what do I do?’ And what I did was [I] drank a bottle of scotch and fell asleep on the couch, which turned out not to be the solution.”
Affleck thought he found the real solution in rebooting his early aughts romance with diva Jennifer Lopez, twenty years after calling off their first engagement. This time, they tied the knot twice: once in Vegas and the other on his sprawling Georgia property. Ralph Lauren designed Lopez’s three gowns, with the entire sartorial event featured in Vogue.
Even I was hopeful! But, alas, all that bliss was short-lived. Bennifer 2.0 wasn’t just a marriage, it was a product, packaged and marketed.
Turns out, Affleck realized the whirlwind relationship was “temporary insanity,” according to Page Six.
“He feels like the last two years was just a fever dream, and he’s come to his senses now and understands there is just no way this is going to work,” a source told Page Six of Affleck.
So, as yet another marriage hits the skids, the actor once again went back to a familiar source of comfort.
Last week, he was spotted on the street with Garner, looking distressed. He spent Father’s Day not with his current wife but with his previous one.
Garner’s frequent interventions on Affleck’s behalf allegedly haven’t sat well with her longterm boyfriend, John Miller.
“Of course it bothers John that Jen is so hyper focused on her ex- husband,” a source told the Daily Mail, adding that Miller “sympathizes with what [Affleck] is going through with [Lopez], but that doesn’t mean Jen should be the one to fix her ex-husband’s issues with his current wife. That makes no sense to anyone.”
Meanwhile, Garner — the closest thing Hollywood has to a saint — continues to offer her sloppy ex a safe port, presumably for the sake of the three children they share.
“I didn’t marry the big fat movie star; I married him,” she told Vanity Fair in a raw 2016 interview. “And I would go back and remake that [same] decision. I ran down the beach to him, and I would again.”
Affleck, like many damaged folks, can’t accept goodness in their life. And Garner remains the best thing that happened to him.